Mint Tea

Note Profile

Prepared

About

Mint Tea is the smell of Maghrebi mint tea: green tea leaf brewed with fresh spearmint and sugar. It is vegetal and grassy first, with a soft green mint lift over it, and a light sweetness the leaf itself does not have.

Scent Profile

Green leads and is the tea liquor itself, transparent, slightly bitter and vegetal, with the grassy sharpness that hexenol derivatives give. Aromatic herbal is the spearmint, described as sweeter and greener than peppermint and closer to basil, so it sits as a herb rather than as a chill. Cooling mentholic is that mint read at the strength spearmint actually carries, well under corn-mint at 0.85 and level with the published spearmint note at 0.42, because the sources say nana mint has no icy edge. Sweet vanillic is the sugar the drink is always served with plus the candy-like roundness the mint glossary gives spearmint. It is not from the tea, which is stated not to read sweet in isolation. Tobacco hay is the dried, roasty leaf that Harney & Sons names in a real Moroccan Mint blend. Under these, sour is the clean astringency that dries rather than warms, aquatic ozonic is the faint marine quality of the green tea accord, powdery is dried leaf dust, smoky is the charred vegetal edge of roasted gunpowder tea, mineral is hot water on leaf, floral covers the orange blossom water some pots carry, citrus is a thin brightness and honeyed is the sugar seen from the other side.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeTop · ~2h lasting

Family Green & Aromatic

Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.

Origin

The drink is green tea, fresh mint leaves, sugar and boiling water. The mint used in the Maghreb is nana spearmint, described as having a clear, pungent, mild aroma. It is not the peppermint chemotype. Moroccan blends are often built on a roasted or gunpowder green tea, which is why vendors describe the base as roasty and charred-vegetal. In the cold season the pot may also carry orange blossom water, marjoram, sage, verbena or wormwood, so the note is a family of related smells rather than one fixed recipe.

Usage in Perfumery

Used as a fresh, non-citrus opening in tea-themed and Middle Eastern-style compositions. It gives the grassy astringency of a green tea accord with a cooling herbal lift, and it does not bring the sweet gourmand weight that milk-tea or iced-tea bring. Perfume houses treat it loosely: Les Princes du Golfe built its own Mint Tea around spiced mint, bergamot, pink pepper, incense, iris and vanilla, which shows the name is a brief, not a specification.