Herbal

Water Mint

Note Profile

Botanical 10 perfumes

Drag to turn On Note Island

About

Water mint smells strongly of mint, fresh and pungent, but lighter than peppermint and with a more herbal, earthy, camphor-like edge. It is one of peppermint's two wild parents, but its oil carries little or no menthol.

Scent Profile

Water mint smells strongly minty and fresh, close to peppermint but lighter and less icy. A herbal, slightly camphor-like note runs through it, with a green, earthy edge that peppermint lacks. A faint musty, woody side shows at the edges. Wild plants vary a lot, from a pleasant camphor-like mint to something pungent.

ScentWheel

Breadthmedium

EnvelopeTop · ~3h lasting

Family Fresh & Citrus

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

WorldSee it in Note Island

ScentArt

What is ScentArt?

Materials That Can Make This Note

Perfumers can build Water Mint from materials such as:

Menthofuran leafy · camphoreous · minty

Smell words come from published sources.

A given perfume with this note may use some of these, or something else.

Origin

Steam-distilled from Mentha aquatica, a wetland mint native across Europe, north-west Africa and south-west Asia, and one of the two wild parents of peppermint (Mentha x piperita = M. aquatica x M. spicata). Unlike peppermint, its oil carries little or no menthol. GC studies of wild populations from Croatia, Serbia, Iran, Corsica, Italy, Ethiopia, Turkey and the Balkans repeatedly find menthofuran and 1,8-cineole as the leading pair, with limonene, beta-caryophyllene, menthone and linalool as secondary constituents and pulegone present in some populations. The species is chemically polymorphic rather than fixed: an Ethiopian population ran 70.5% menthofuran, an Italian selection 58.5%, while a Turkish population instead ran 55.3% 1,8-cineole with almost no menthofuran.

Usage in Perfumery

A minor accent, not a lead. It gives a mint accord a softer, more herbal and slightly earthy edge than peppermint or spearmint would. Its oil has been compared to pennyroyal.