OLD VERSION - Evergreen Spice

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!

I’m one of those people who spend New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day by myself. I’m probably not the only one…and after years and years, I don’t feel sorry for myself about it.

There was a time when I was forced to be around New Years events that I didn’t want to be around…and I ended up afraid of what could happen to me at the hand of an abusive person.

I’m so thankful in my present life to be safe!

Tonight I put on good music, made some dip and crackers…had a really good dinner too. Worked on my Pinterest Boards.

Now, here we are together…you, my friends on Steepster.

It’s just us with some tea.

If you’re alone like me…make some tea and I’ll tell you how this tea made me feel…how it took me back to another December.

The Story:
Silicon Valley is a new title for the Valley I grew up in.
Once it was known as the ‘Prune Capitol of the World’ not the center of technology.
On one side of the Valley are the small Coast Range Mountains and then the Pacific Ocean.
At Christmas, my children Aaron, Annalisa and I would bundle up and head up narrow Black Road…winding our way through Ponderosa Pine and Redwood Forests..up, up through mountain mists until we reached our favorite tree farm.

The dirt entry off the paved road was perched above the tree farm. As we looked below us, we could see a low ranch house and a big rustic woodshed decorated with Christmas lights, candy canes and stars. A woodfire billowed sweet smelling smoke into the cold, damp air. A hidden machine blew bubbles like snow high into the sky. It was magical!

When we arrived a rotund, aproned Mrs.Claus greated us with laughter, hot cider and ginger cookies…then gave us instructions on how to cut our tree to protect the trunk for regrowth.

We tumbled laughing and yelling through rows and rows of fragrant trees, letting the branches swipe across our faces…rushing off here and there to be first to find the perfect tree.

Such delightful joy!

I often think that this was one of those moments that God allowed me to be a child…as it does now in the retelling of the story.

The Tea:
When I prepared this tea…the use of real Ponderosa Pine with ‘mild’ Yabao in the blend, transported me back those 30 years.
I could smell the sweet, fresh cut fir tree and the sap. It’s a sweet smell. Then, brown sugar, graham cracker…nutmeg and ginger.

Spot-on this tea takes me deep into the WINTER FOREST.

I’m a lover of raw innovation…bold creativity and high standards in blends. No spay-tan flavors to make-a-buck pseudo-tea for me.

One of the memories that lasts throughout your life is scent and taste. Cool isn’t it. All the tea will associate with places and people…woods and trees, love and celebrations.

Evergreen Spice allowed me to become myself 30 years ago with my young children in the Coastal Mountains cutting down a Christmas Tree with the scent of Redwoods and Pine. Spiced Cider and cookies…

How glorious is that!

Blessed 2014 to you all my beloved friends!

A note: Not a critic of real sugar here but I have a critical note for once below:
(No artificial sweetener…none…nada…it changes the yabao into soap so don’t please.)

(Yikes this is review 666 on New Years Eve…good thing that I have no fear! It’s funny!)

This tea blend is Delicious! One of my fav WP blends already I need to get some more. It is very nice and soothing when made warm and it is extremely refreshing when made cold. The notes of pine are perfect with slight minty notes that play really well with the pine. The spicy notes of the cinnamon and cloves are really well balanced too. If I could drink a snowy christmas tree I bet it would taste like this tea, its like a piney winter wonderland in your mouth. Piney and minty with warming spicy notes, it don’t get much better than that. A true wilderness tea, I must get more soon so I can share with my brother. I’m saving my last bit of this batch for us to drink outside by the fire, I think it would be great tea to enjoy outdoors.

The Inspiration
Evergreen Spice was inspired by the pristine evergreen forests and deciduous woodlands of the upper peninsula of Michigan! We started with a complex base of traditional-roast tieguanyin and aged yabao before adding wildcrafted green pine needles and roasted red cedar leaves. This beautiful evergreen base is set on top of the perfect blend of organic spices and organic holy basil before being sprinkled with earthy spearmint.

The flavor of Evergreen Spice opens up with smooth green notes and the pine and cedar fuse with the spices for a very unique combination. They are so well balanced that the spices almost seem to be coming from the evergreen leaves, forming a beautiful layer of warmth. The middle of the sip carries creamy floral notes from the tieguanyin that are spun together with the sweet velvety freshness of aged yabao. The yabao naturally has pine notes, pulling all of these ingredients together as one. At the end of the sip, you get warm cedar, peppercorn, and earthy organic holy basil tied together with the earthy qualities of spearmint, and as the taste lingers on your tongue, you are left with the slightest hint of cooling mint — barely there yet vital to the beauty of the cup.

Both the green pine needles and roasted cedar leaves are ingredients only found at Whispering Pines Tea Company. The pine needles are sustainably wildcrafted by the owner and processed similar to white tea. The cedar leaves are roasted under low heat in 1 ounce batches to achieve a complex and sweet evergreen profile.

This is a perfect embodiment of the beauty of northern Michigan and will please any tea lover!

Notes
Pine
Cedar
Caramel
Roasty
Rosemary
Brown Sugar
Earthy
Warm Spice
Mint

How to brew the perfect cup:
Steep 1 tablespoon of leaves
in 8 ounces of boiling water
for 5 minutes.

2nd infusion: 5 minutes
3rd infusion: 7 minutes
4th infusion: 10 minutes

Ingredients
Traditional-Roast Tieguanyin Oolong
Sun-Dried White Tea
Wildcrafted Roasted Western Red Cedar Leaves
Wildcrafted Green Ponderosa Pine Needles
Black Peppercorn
Organic Ginger
Holy Basil
Spearmint
Organic Cardamom
Organic Cinnamon Pieces
Organic Cloves

Caffeine Content
Medium

http://whisperingpinestea.com/evergreenspice.html

This is absolutely lovely! Thank-you Brenden. :-D

I don’t normally consider chais calming, but this one certainly is. There are lots of cedar and pine notes at the start of the sip followed by spice and then the holy basil. Through the entire sip there is a lovely buttery smoothness that just makes me want to take my time and enjoy each sip. So good.

For some reason this tea reminds me of the holidays. If I were to imagine an ideal Christmas-y tea it would be something awfully close to this. The spice gives the festive note, the cedar and pine goes back to nature, and the holy basil gives a calming feeling that I often desperately want/need at that time of year. Not that I would only drink this tea around the holiday season, but you can bet Santa’s milk and cookies that I’ll have a ready supply of it by then!

Thank you kimquat for sending some of this my way!

This tea opens with the taste of evergreen trees: pine, cedar. Warming spice follows closely behind, then mellows into a soft, creamy freshness. (At a cooler temperature it becomes slightly floral.) The finish is very roasty with hints of basil and spearmint. Clean, but with a velvety mouthfeel. I’m noticing a lot of qi in this tea tonight: my feet and hands feel hot and my head’s a little woozy. Interesting! It’s very good. It makes me think of standing underneath a cedar tree, with the cool wind tugging at my hair…the gurgling sound of a stream in the distance. It’s refreshing and earthy. The spices—especially the peppercorn—are making the back of my throat pleasantly tingly. The taste that clings to my tongue long, long afterwards is like vanilla, pepper, roasted nuts, and brown sugar.

I just checked WPT’s site and Evergreen Spice isn’t listed anymore? ): Oh no. I think I’ll share the last of this with my nature-loving friend. I had a pot of Ashes of Autumn with him yesterday and he loved it.

SSTTB

So I took a sip and all I could think is “this tastes like a tree”. That sounds weird but really it is pretty fitting. This tastes like evergreen trees smell: crisp and refreshing. It really is an interesting blend and one I would never picked up on my own so I am grateful for the teabox because once I got the chance to smell it, I was sucked in!

Oh, wow! This is a yabao I can get behind. It’s really light and sweet and foresty – like wind blowing through the pines. I drank it so fast that I’ll have to resteep it and look at it again!