October

I know…I missed October by a little bit, but hey…who doesn’t want October in February? :)

The Inspiration
The inspiration is October of course! The goal for this blend was to bring you to the October pumpkin festivals as well as create the feeling of autumn, and this blend does not fail! We started this blend by accidentally discovering that roasted yabao tastes like delicious, sweet, salted kettle corn. Blending our house-roasted 2012 aged yabao with cedar leaves (also roasted in-house) created a fantastic fall time medley, reminiscent of the evergreen trees outside of the gift shop at every October festival and the sweet aroma of kettle corn in the air. Opening the door to the gift shop, you are overcome with the mouthwatering smell of pumpkin pie spices, which we achieved by adding the perfect amount of organic cinnamon and cloves!

The final product is light and sweet with the perfect pumpkin spice background, highly aromatic with notes of hay, evergreen, and caramel, all achieved with zero additives and only four ingredients!

Notes
Kettle Corn
Caramel
Evergreen
Pumpkin Spice
Velvety Sweetness
Cornfields
Hay

http://whisperingpinestea.com/october.html

Thank you 221tea! (199)

I really enjoyed this sample. I’ve had yabao before but was a little indifferent because it’s an expensive tea, and it doesn’t always ‘pop’ for me. Sometimes it just tastes like slightly sweetened waterl

Not this time. This is nice, and light but flavourful. I taste wind in the evergreens, cinnamon and something silky and smooth. It’s gentle and refreshing, and I’m off to resteep another cup!

This is my first tea from Whispering Pines. They nailed the name of this tea. It reminds you of everything lovely about the Fall. It’s weird to be drinking it in the Spring. Haha.

If you love cloves, this is your tea. The taste of the cloves is overpowering for the first few sips, but then it mellows quite nicely. I actually enjoyed this cup more and more as it cooled.

It’s almost like an apple cider, without the apples. Which sounds odd, but it works.

My husband had the second steep and he enjoyed it. This tea calls for 1tbsp per cup. So be careful when measuring.

This is one of the most complex tea’s I’ve had the pleasure of tasting. Trying to put into words what a cup is like is trying to describe a day in the woods, so many elements come together to make that memory it’s not easy to tease out highlights. If you’ve read Whispering Pines description you know they were aiming for that sort of experience, and they certainly have achieved it here. It’s a spicy tea. The cloves are a bit heavy at the front, but once your pallet grows accustomed to such a strong flavor in a white tea you begin to find the other notes that round out the experience. The cedar is particularly interesting as I don’t think I’ve ever tasted cedar before, only smelled it. Here the cedar does a good job of grounding the tea and bringing you back around to the white tea base. I find the cinnamon gets lost in the cloves, but as you move through the cup that clears up.

While not something I’d drink daily, this is definitely a tea I want to keep in my cupboard for cold nights and warm memories!