Organic

What is Peppermint?

Peppermint is Mentha × piperita, a fragrant perennial mint and a botanical hybrid of watermint and spearmint. Its deep green leaves hold tiny oil glands that give the plant its unmistakably cool, clean scent.

We use organic peppermint leaves, not peppermint essential oil. The leaves are gently infused into the tallow and oils, then filtered out. This is the peppermint preparation in Refresh Vanilla Mint Tallow Lip Balm, where it brings a soft, real mint character alongside organic vanilla bean.

Peppermint leaf contains two broad kinds of plant chemistry. Its volatile compounds include menthol, menthone, menthyl acetate, 1,8-cineole, and limonene. It also contains more water-friendly polyphenols such as rosmarinic acid and eriocitrin. An oil infusion favors the leaf’s volatile, oil-compatible compounds, while water is better at drawing out its polar polyphenols. That distinction shapes what our infusion is and which research belongs with it.

Traditional Use and Cultural History

People have used mints for centuries in food, tea, bathing, household care, and herbal practice. Peppermint itself has a more specific history than the mint family as a whole. The clearest botanical record appears in England in 1696, when John Ray described the plant later known as peppermint. It entered the London Pharmacopoeia in 1721 and became an important European garden, apothecary, confectionery, and tea herb.

Peppermint leaf became especially familiar as a fragrant digestive tea. The European Medicines Agency still recognizes the traditional oral use of defined peppermint-leaf preparations for indigestion and flatulence. On the body, peppermint preparations have also long been associated with cooling, freshness, and comfort.

What I like about the leaf is its restraint. Infusion lets peppermint settle into a nourishing base instead of asking one concentrated compound to do all the work. The result feels close to the old practice of steeping a plant and valuing what it contributes as part of a complete preparation.

Why We Love It

Its Chemistry Fits an Oil Infusion

A 2026 study gives us unusually relevant evidence for this preparation. Researchers compared short, food-grade extractions of peppermint leaves using water, nanowater, glycerol, ethanol, and rapeseed oil. Rapeseed oil was especially effective at carrying the leaf’s volatile oil, with the two-step process recovering nearly all of that volatile material. Researchers identified 64 compounds in the recovered profile, led by menthol and menthone.

Water and nanowater performed best for polar polyphenols and antioxidant activity, while the oil excelled with the fragrant, cooling compounds. That clean difference is useful. It shows that an oil infusion has its own botanical purpose rather than being a weaker version of peppermint tea. The laboratory conditions do not give us a concentration for our finished balm, but the study answers the larger question clearly: peppermint’s volatile compounds can move directly from the leaf into an edible oil.

It Creates Freshness Through a Real Sensory Pathway

Peppermint’s cool feeling has a well-described biological mechanism. Menthol activates TRPM8, a sensory ion channel that responds to cool temperatures. A landmark 2007 Nature study confirmed that TRPM8 is a principal detector of environmental cold and the receptor behind much of menthol’s cooling effect. The sensation is real even when the tissue itself has not become colder.

Because we begin with the leaf rather than distilled essential oil or menthol crystals, the result is deliberately softer and more variable. That is exactly the kind of freshness we want: light, botanical, and closer to mint tea than an aggressively icy lip product.

Its Cooling Chemistry Is Connected With Skin Comfort

TRPM8 research suggests that peppermint’s cooling chemistry can influence more than sensation. In a 2010 mouse study, topical TRPM8 agonists, including menthol, accelerated skin-barrier recovery after experimental disruption and reduced the excess epidermal growth that followed the barrier insult. In cultured human keratinocytes, TRPM8 activation also reduced ultraviolet B-induced prostaglandin E2, an inflammatory signaling molecule.

A 2022 Nature Communications study added another interesting piece. Topical l-menthol reduced several inflammatory findings in a mouse psoriasis model through a pathway involving protein phosphatase 6 and HES1 in keratinocytes. These studies used isolated menthol and experimental models rather than a whole-leaf infusion, but I find them valuable because they show that peppermint’s cooling pathway is biologically interesting, not simply a smell or flavor effect.

Its Volatile Compounds Show Antimicrobial Activity in the Lab

Peppermint’s volatile chemistry has also been active in laboratory microbe studies. In 2002, peppermint essential oils were screened against 21 microorganisms. They strongly inhibited the tested plant pathogens and moderately inhibited the human pathogens, with bioautography pointing to menthol as an important contributor. A later study found that peppermint essential oil affected Candida albicans growth, its transition to the invasive hyphal form, biofilm formation, and selected virulence genes.

Those experiments used concentrated essential oil, not our leaf infusion, so we do not treat peppermint as a preservative or an infection remedy. I still find the findings worth including because the 2026 oil-extraction work confirms that a leaf infusion can carry the same family of volatile compounds in a gentler botanical preparation.

Quick Answers

Is infused peppermint leaf the same as peppermint essential oil?

No. Peppermint essential oil is the concentrated volatile material collected through distillation. We place organic peppermint leaves directly into the tallow and oils and allow their compatible compounds to infuse into the base. The spent leaves are then filtered out.

Does your peppermint infusion contain menthol?

Peppermint leaves naturally contain menthol within their volatile oil, and research shows that oil can carry some of it from the leaf. We do not add isolated menthol, menthol crystals, or peppermint essential oil. The naturally transferred amount can vary with the leaves and infusion conditions, so it should not be compared with a standardized menthol product.

Why use the leaves instead of peppermint essential oil?

The leaf gives us the peppermint character we want in a softer, more complete form. It brings a gentle mint scent and taste along with a broader plant profile, without turning the formula into a sharply tingling or essential-oil-heavy product.

Will peppermint leaf make my lips tingle?

Refresh is made to feel subtly fresh, not intensely cold or tingly. Some people notice a light cooling impression from the peppermint leaf infusion, while others mainly notice the soft vanilla mint scent and flavor. It is closer to mint tea than a mentholated lip product.

Does it taste like peppermint candy?

No. The flavor comes from real peppermint leaves and vanilla beans, so it is soft, botanical, and lightly minty rather than sweet or candy-like. There are no synthetic flavor oils or sweeteners encouraging you to keep licking your lips.

Can peppermint bother sensitive lips?

Peppermint can bother some very reactive lips, especially in the form of concentrated essential oil or added menthol. Our whole-leaf infusion is intentionally much softer, but personal sensitivity still matters. If mint has irritated your lips before, our unscented Simple Lip Balm may be the better fit.

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Peppermint