Mint for Skin: Spearmint vs. Peppermint (and Why We Grow Both)

What Mint Brings to Skin

Mint has been a skincare ingredient for about as long as people have grown it, and the reason is immediate: you feel it. Peppermint leaves carry menthol, the compound behind that unmistakable cooling sensation — the bright, awake feeling that makes mint a natural fit for balms, hand creams, and anything you reach for at the end of a long day. Spearmint works differently. Its leading compound is carvone rather than menthol, so its character is softer and sweeter — refreshing without the sharp edge.

That's the practical answer to "why mint for skin": a clean, cooling, aromatic experience, plus the conditioning qualities of the oil it's infused into. And it's why we don't treat "mint" as one ingredient. The two plants bring genuinely different things to a formula, which is exactly why we grow both.

One distinction matters here. Most minty skincare gets its character from a drop of essential oil added at the end. Ours starts with the whole dried plant — leaves and stems — steeped in organic oil for weeks. The essential-oil note is sometimes there too, as a finish, but the foundation is the herb itself.

Two Mints, One Garden

When most people think of mint, they picture a single plant. At InVine Botanicals, we grow several: spearmint, peppermint, and a lemon mint, each one distinct in scent and character, and each one earning its place in a specific product.

Spearmint is the sweeter, milder one. Its scent is soft and rounded — the kind you recognize from a cup of herbal tea or a walk through a herb garden on a warm morning. Peppermint runs sharper and brighter, with that clean, unmistakable menthol edge that sharpens the senses. Growing both means we can reach for exactly the right character depending on what a balm or cream calls for.

All of it — spearmint, peppermint, and lemon mint — grows right here in our Tallahassee, Florida garden, tended by hand alongside our rosemary, calendula, lemon balm, basil, and roses.

Growing Mint in Florida

Mint is famously vigorous. It spreads by underground runners and, given half a chance, will cheerfully take over everything around it. We manage that the same way careful growers have for centuries: containers and dedicated beds. Our mints grow in their own space, contained but comfortable, which actually suits them. Florida warmth and long growing seasons mean our plants are lush, productive, and flowering well into summer — when the bees find them and the whole bed hums.

That vigor is a real asset for a small-batch maker. One established spearmint plant yields cuttings all season long. We only ever cut what the next small batch needs — nothing more. The plant stays healthy, the garden stays in balance, and nothing goes to waste.

Harvest: Timing Is Everything

We harvest mint by hand, cutting stems with shears a handful at a time, just before the plant flowers. That's the window when the aromatic oils in the leaves are at their peak — the moment the scent is sharpest and most complex. Once it's cut, it goes straight into a basket and indoors while that fragrance is fully alive.

Nothing here is rushed, and nothing is harvested that we don't need. That unhurried approach is a through line in everything we do at InVine.

Drying: Slow, Dark, and Deliberate

After harvest, the mint goes onto screen drying racks in our climate-controlled room — around 76°F, low humidity, and kept completely dark. That combination protects both the bright green color and the aromatic oils that would otherwise cook off with high heat or fade in light.

It dries slowly over several days, turned and tended by hand until it's fully ready. The drying room smells extraordinary — mint alongside rosemary, calendula, and roses, all coming in off the garden together. It is, genuinely, one of the better parts of this work.

Slow Infusion: Six to Eight Weeks

Once the mint is fully dried, it goes into organic oil for a slow, whole-herb infusion in cool, dark conditions — a process that takes six to eight weeks depending on the herb. This is the InVine method applied to every botanical we grow: no shortcuts, no extracts, no fragrance added afterward. The whole dried plant, slowly releasing its character into the oil over weeks. By the time we strain and blend, the oil carries the genuine aromatic quality of the mint we grew — not an approximation of it.

Where the Mint Goes

Mint's distinctive cooling, aromatic quality makes it a natural fit in balms and creams where that fresh-cut-herb character is part of the experience. Here's how we use each variety:

Spearmint lends its soft, rounded fragrance to four products: the Breathe Free Balm, the Muscle Revive Balm, the Spearmint Hand Cream, and the Rose Renewal Crème. In the hand cream, spearmint is the star — bright, clean, unmistakable.

Peppermint brings its sharper, brighter character to the Breathe Free Balm and the Muscle Revive Balm. In both, it's the garden-grown whole peppermint plant we've infused — distinct from the drop of peppermint essential oil we add as a finishing note to deepen the aroma.

Lemon mint goes into the Bug Bite Balm and the Muscle Revive Balm, adding a citrus-edged brightness that plays beautifully off the other botanicals in each formula.

In every case, the mint is a whole herb we grew, harvested, dried, and infused ourselves — not a fragrance added at the end. That's the distinction that matters at InVine. We've gone deeper on the cooling side of these two herbs in Peppermint & Spearmint: The Cooling Herbs, and on what spearmint does in a hand cream in Spearmint Hand Cream for Dry Hands.

From Garden to Jar

Mint is one of those herbs that most people have encountered in some form their whole lives — in teas, in food, in the garden. What we're after at InVine is that same quality, carried whole into a balm or cream through slow infusion rather than shortcut extraction. When you open a jar of our Spearmint Hand Cream or uncap the Breathe Free Balm, what you're smelling is the plant we grew in our Tallahassee garden — nothing more, nothing less.

If you'd like to experience garden-grown mint in your skincare, our Spearmint Hand Cream and Breathe Free Balm are a good place to start.