Mint

Herbs

Mint is a group of intensely aromatic herbs of the genus Mentha, prized in beverages for their cooling, fragrant leaves. In drinks they are used fresh (muddled, steeped, or as garnish), dried for infusions, and distilled or macerated into liqueurs.

How mint is prepared

Mint appears in hot and iced infusions (mint tea, herbal tisanes), in muddled cocktails and their alcohol-free versions (mojito, mint julep, South Side), in sweet mint liqueurs, and as an aromatic garnish across countless drinks.

Other preparations

Beverages using this preparation · 1
FERAL
N°6 Cook The Mountain
Still white0% ABV
prepared as Fennel, Linden, Mountain Pine and Herb Extract

The pine in this extract is mountain pine.[8][9]

In depth

Ancient Mediterranean roots as an infusion and remedy

Mint has been steeped in water and taken as an infusion, decoction, and medicinal preparation throughout the Mediterranean since antiquity. Spearmint (Mentha spicata), native to that region and later naturalized across much of Europe and North America, became the mint most often reached for by cooks and brewers alike. Roman writers already noted its bracing effect, and by the Middle Ages mint was a fixture of European kitchen and medicinal gardens, both cultivated and gathered wild. This long tradition of drinking mint for its aromatic, digestive, and cooling qualities laid the groundwork for its later role in specialty beverages, where a simple hot-water infusion of the leaves remains one of its most enduring uses.[1]

Mint tea as a herbal infusion

The simplest mint beverage is a tisane made by infusing fresh or dried leaves in hot water. Strictly speaking this is not a true tea, since it contains no leaf of the Camellia sinensis plant; it belongs instead to the family of herbal infusions. Because it lacks the tannins and caffeine of true tea, a mint infusion is forgiving to brew, resisting the bitterness that comes from oversteeping and tolerating a wide range of times and temperatures. Peppermint and spearmint each yield their own character, and blends of the two are common. Regional traditions abound: in Korea a wild-mint infusion known as bakha-cha is prepared from East Asian mint, while in India mint is steeped into spiced chai. Served hot or iced and often sweetened with sugar or honey, mint tea is also valued for its reputed digestive benefits.[2]

North African mint tea and its ceremony

In the Maghreb, mint is combined not with hot water alone but with gunpowder green tea and a generous measure of sugar to produce the region's signature drink. Green tea reached North Africa through British trade in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, entering by way of ports such as Essaouira, and the practice of infusing it with fresh spearmint spread from Morocco across Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania, and among the Berber and Tuareg peoples of the Sahara. Native spearmint, prized for its clean, mild aroma, is traditional, though in colder months warming herbs such as wormwood, sage, verbena, and marjoram may be added, and orange blossom water sometimes perfumes the pot. The tea is brewed with boiling water and poured from a height to aerate it, and is served in at least three rounds, each glass tasting different as the leaves continue to steep. Central to hospitality and social life, it is captured in the proverb that the first glass is bitter as life, the second strong as love, and the third soothing as death.[3]

The mint julep in the American South

Mint became a defining ingredient of one of America's oldest mixed drinks, the mint julep, which arose in the Southern United States during the eighteenth century. The word julep traces back through Spanish and Arabic to a Persian term for rosewater, and early English juleps were medicinal, lightly alcoholic preparations. Colonial and early republican Virginia adopted mint julep as both remedy and refreshment, and by the 1820s it had become a marker of local identity there. The classic recipe muddles fresh mint, traditionally spearmint in Kentucky, with sugar and water before it is combined with spirit and packed with crushed ice, releasing the herb's essential oils. Early versions were built on brandy, gin, or genever, but bourbon came to dominate in the twentieth century. Served traditionally in a frosted silver or pewter cup, the julep is now inseparable from the Kentucky Derby, where it is poured by the tens of thousands.[4]

The mojito and the Caribbean muddled tradition

In the Caribbean, mint anchors the mojito, a traditional Cuban punch built from white rum, sugar, lime juice, soda water, and mint. Its ancestry reaches back to early medicinal mixtures of crude cane spirit blended with lime, sugarcane juice, and mint to mask harsh flavors and ward off tropical ailments. In preparing the drink the mint is only gently bruised with a muddler to coax out its aromatic oils without shredding the leaves, then combined with lime and sugar before the rum and sparkling water are added over ice. In Cuba the mint of choice is a local spearmint hybrid known as yerba buena, with a light minty-citrus scent, though elsewhere ordinary spearmint, with its stronger aroma, is more often used. The mojito's balance of sweet, sour, and herbaceous notes has made it a global summer favorite, and it lends itself readily to an alcohol-free version, the so-called virgin mojito, along with many fruit variations.[5]

Mint in classic shaken cocktails

Beyond the julep and mojito, mint flavors a wider family of Western mixed drinks. The South Side, an American cocktail whose origins are variously linked to Chicago and to a Long Island sportsmen's club, brings together gin, lemon juice, simple syrup, and fresh mint, shaken and strained; adding soda water produces the South Side Fizz. As in the julep and mojito, the mint is muddled to release its oils before the spirit is added, placing these drinks within the loose family of smashes and fizzes that rely on crushed fresh herbs and citrus. Such drinks translate easily into low- and no-alcohol formats, where mint provides the aromatic lift and refreshing coolness that the spirit would otherwise frame.[6]

Crème de menthe and mint liqueurs

Mint is also captured in distilled and macerated form as crème de menthe, a sweet, mint-flavored liqueur made by steeping mint, typically peppermint or Corsican mint, in grain alcohol for several weeks before filtering and sweetening. It comes in a clear white version and a green one, the two interchangeable in recipes apart from color, and usually sits around a quarter alcohol by volume. Served on its own as a digestif, it is also a building block of classic cocktails such as the Grasshopper and the Stinger. Related sweet mint liqueurs appear in other traditions, including a mint spirit popular in Bulgaria that is drunk chilled in summer and mixed into local cocktails. These products show how mint's flavor can be preserved and concentrated, extending the herb's reach far beyond fresh-leaf preparations.[7]

References

  1. [1]EncyclopediaMint sauce — Wikipedia↑§1
  2. [2]EncyclopediaMint tea (herbal tea) — Wikipedia↑§2
  3. [3]EncyclopediaMaghrebi mint tea — Wikipedia↑§3
  4. [4]EncyclopediaMint julep — Wikipedia↑§4
  5. [5]EncyclopediaMojito — Wikipedia↑§5
  6. [6]EncyclopediaSouth Side (cocktail) — Wikipedia↑§6
  7. [7]EncyclopediaCrème de menthe — Wikipedia↑§7
  8. [8]Product informationN°6 Feral & Atelier Moessmer Norbert Niederkofler↑prepared
  9. [9]page_scrapehttps://feral-drinks.com/en-eu/products/mountain-box↑prepared