Moonlight White Tea “Chocolate Bar”

What is Moonlight White Tea?

Moonlight White is made with Yunnan big-leaf white tea leaves. This tea explodes with floral scent, and releases a very clean and sweet flavor when brewed. As it progresses past the wash steep, it builds a strong body with herbal tasting notes. A cocoa/chocolate note is also present.

Unlike Fujianese white teas, which are separated into various grades by separating buds and leaves, Yunnan Moonlight White tea is made with both leaves and buds, lending scent from the buds and deeper flavor from the leaves.

The tea is called “Moonlight” because of the beautiful contrast between the darker leaf backs, which can sometimes look almost entirely black, and the pale white of the underside of the leaves.

What is White Tea? 

White tea is the simplest, least-processed form of tea.

While other types of tea go through many types of rolling, fermenting, and heating, white tea is made simply by plucking tea leaves by hand and allowing them to wither on a drying table. The table is made with a mesh bottom, and airflow is increased by running a fan below the table to constantly bring fresh air in contact with the leaves, aiding the withering process.

The leaves wither, dry, and then that’s it! The result is a clean, fresh, natural tea that keeps the sweet and herbal nature of the tea leaf.

White tea also has the benefit of continuing to age over time, which deepens the flavor and color of the tea. As such, you never need to worry about white tea “going bad.”

Jesse Says:

When we were tasting samples for our tea orange line, I felt that the moonlight white tea was really excellent and I wanted to have it on the site by itself. Moonlight white has such a great balance of fragrance, flavor, and depth that it’s good for both beginner tea drinkers and also people who’ve had many white teas.

Since we were a year into planning the tea orange line, I knew we wouldn’t have time to get it into our February line, but I thought if we hit the gas, we could get it in the May box to share it with people.

OGs of the Teahouse know we used to have a white tea chocolate bar on the site before, and while I liked that one, I sourced it during Covid when I couldn’t travel to the farms and we have better options now. I was waiting for a long time to “revive” the chocolate bar and I think you will absolutely love the experience of drinking these.

And – because Moonlight White has a bit of a chocolatey tasting note – there’s no better tea to press into squares!

A note on the year of the tea - this is a blend of 2024 and 2025 moonlight white from the same farm. We blended them because so we can keep the flavor consistent when we restock, as opposed to needing to switch batches when we run out of the 2024 (which would happen halfway through the subscription box stock). Flavor-wise, I found the blend to be almost exactly the same as the 2024 batch by itself.

Jesse Has Opinions About Chocolate Bar Teas:

After a lifetime of drinking pressed teas, I know what I like and what I don’t.

- I don’t like teas compressed so hard that you can’t break them off by hand if needed, and the leaves take forever to get soaked through and create an uneven steeping experience;
- I don’t like teas pressed so thick that you can’t break them with your hands, since “one serving” has almost no surface area to grab from above and below, and
- I also don’t like making people buy huge amounts, like 357g, or even 100g, to try teas.

This bar solves all three of those issues.

We experimented multiple times with our press, using different shapes and different pressures, ultimately landing on the current format: 

Two beautiful 30g cakes;
Each pressed into six 5g sessions;
Just firm enough to hold together and soft enough to break easily.

We even custom-designed a special box to the shape and size of our new “chocolate bars.”

Originally we were going to do our normal 50g size, but we found out that without 30g in each chocolate bar, the bar was not able to hold its shape. As such I just decided to give you all a bit of extra tea 🙂

NOT JUST TEA, TEA CULTURE

Jesse believes the key to making good tea is to help his Chinese tea friends share not just their best teas, but the best ways to make the teas.

That's why each box comes also comes with an info card that tells you:
- Tea Origin
- Steep Temperature
- Steep Time
- Directions for both teapot steeping and gaiwan steeping

All Jesse’s Teahouse Tea Friends (that’s you now!) also get access to private YouTube videos where Jesse and his Chinese tea friends show you how to make the teas and explain the tea-making process. 

The links are on QR codes on the back of the info card included in the tea box.

Don't Forget Your Tea Pets!

In Chinese Gongfu Tea Tradition, Tea Pets accompany you at teatime and you "raise" them by feeding them tea! Don't forget to check the tea pet page before you go!