I frequently get asked whether a particular tea should be drunk with milk. Really, there is no right answer, because the taste of tea is subjective. It’s like deciding whether to eat rice cooked or raw - most people prefer it cooked, but if you like the taste of raw rice, then go ahead and eat it that way.

In fact, whether you take milk with your tea varies by where you live. Some countries make their tea completely with milk instead of water, some use condensed milk, some use cream. I don’t take any tea with milk, even the strong black tea that comes in tea bags. As a guideline, milk is probably best suited to the strong teas.

For the weakest teas, including white teas and many green teas, the taste of the milk will drown out the taste of the tea. With some of the white teas, it is difficult enough picking out the full taste without having to battle your way through milk. Also the texture of the milk, its thickness, will overpower the delicacy of the tea and you won’t really be feeling that tea in your mouth. For me most importantly, if you add milk you lose the beautiful colour of the tea. Additionally, many white teas are made with water that is far from boiling point, so it is unhelpful to cool the water further by adding milk.

For the medium strength teas, such as most Oolongs and Darjeelings, adding milk will particularly destroy the unique aroma that these teas have. I personally feel that the taste of an aromatic tea such as Darjeeling or jasmine tea, together with milk, is quite strange but more importantly adding milk to Oolongs will make them taste more like each other, and adding milk to Darjeelings will make them taste more like each other. That defeats the purpose of carefully selecting from the many teas available.

Milk is best suited to the strong teas, which can hold their own against the addition of milk. For my own taste, not all black teas are strong enough for milk - I have tried many times to add milk to China Golden Camellia or China Golden Spiral but the outcome is pretty insipid. I am, however, influenced by the strength of PG Tips, which is my idea of a perfect tea to which one can add milk. Overall, with the strong teas, the milk will still change the taste and aroma of the tea (try a before-and-after test) and of course the tea will lose its colour, but you will nonetheless get a balanced result, without the milk overpowering the tea. Indeed, for some people a plain black tea can be too strong without milk.

Tippyleaf indicates for each tea whether it “can” be drunk with milk or no - just remember that ultimately the question is a very subjective one.