White Chocolate Puer

I’ve had a sealed bag of this since January of 2018… just now opening and drinking it. (Hur-hur…)

The dry leaf does have a chocolately aroma, in a very “chocolate liquer” sort of way. Brewed up the tea is thick and dark like coffee, still with the strong chocolate liquer aroma, though there is a sort of vanilla/cream sweetness to the aroma, which does make it lean closer to milk or white chocolate in aroma than dark chocolate. That sweetness is maybe just a hint floraly, as well.

I quite like the flavor! It tastes more like dark chocolate than white chocolate, but it is very rich and smooth. The pu’erh itself (a flavor I tend to dislike) is quite mellow here, with an inoffensive earthiness in the background. The thick mouthfeel from the pu’erh is quite nice, making this cup feel less thin/oily than many chocolate-flavored teas.

It doesn’t top Art of Tea’s Dark Chocolate Peppermint for me in terms of a flavored pu’erh blend, but definitely comes very close!

A very smooth puer blend, that is rich and much better than I expected.

I’m surprised at how good this stuff turned out. It’s an inexpensive puer that you would think loses its luster with the blend overpowering the puer taste. Not really, though. I get a vanilla and white tea flavor with some earthiness to balance it out.

Now, it won’t develop different taste profiles over steeps or over time, which is a lot of the fun of other puers. But if you want to make a foray into the world of shou puer tea, this could be a “gateway tea”.

For me it gives an excellent l-theanine buzz as well. Again, I don’t know if other people ever get this feeling but I love it.

And if you look at the current price, this is one of the cheaper puer teas at TeaSource.

All that combines to a solid rating, especially at the current price. But it’s not like a typical puer – so as long as you are okay with that, go ahead and try it out. This one reminds me a lot of the Iron Silk Puer blend, and though I haven’t tried it yet, the Sticky Rice Puer blend. (I think my next purchase may be a refill of this along with Sticky Rice.)