Types of Mint
Twenty-one varieties, what they actually taste like, and what each one is for.
Most people know two kinds of mint: the one in gum and the one in mojitos. There are hundreds.
The genus Mentha hybridizes so freely — in the wild and in cultivation — that new varieties appear on their own, and growers have been selecting the interesting ones for centuries. The result is a family of plants that all read unmistakably as mint while smelling like chocolate, pineapple, banana, citrus peel, or basil.
Below is every variety we grow. All are hardy perennials. All of them spread. (In South Asian cooking mint is known as pudina — the spearmint types below are what's traditionally used.)
The classics
The varieties most people mean when they say "mint" — and worth growing even if you also grow the unusual ones.
Peppermint
Mentha × piperita
The highest-menthol mint in the collection and the most recognizable — bright, cooling, clean. Peppermint is itself a natural hybrid of watermint and spearmint, first documented near Mitcham, England in the 1690s, and it became one of the world's most economically important aromatic crops.
Best for: tea, baking, anything where you want unmistakable mint
Curly Spearmint
Mentha spicata 'Crispa'
Tightly crimped leaves and a fuller, more aromatic flavor than common spearmint. This is the mint of Moroccan tea culture, brewed strong with gunpowder green tea and sugar. Spearmint's dominant compound is L-carvone rather than menthol, which is why it reads cleaner and cooler than peppermint rather than sharper.
Best for: Moroccan mint tea, cooking, cocktails
Emerald and Gold Mint
Mentha spicata 'Emerald and Gold'
A variegated spearmint, and the other ornamental in the collection alongside pineapple mint. Green leaves marbled and streaked with gold, so it earns a spot in a border on looks alone — but the flavor underneath is straightforward, useful spearmint rather than a novelty. If you want a mint that pulls double duty as a garden plant and a kitchen herb, this is the one.
Best for: ornamental planting, tea, cooking, garnish
Kentucky Colonel
Mentha spicata 'Kentucky Colonel'
The mint julep mint. Broad bright leaves and a clean, slightly sweet spearmint flavor that holds up against bourbon instead of disappearing into it. Grown at Churchill Downs and in historic Kentucky gardens for generations.
Best for: juleps, cocktails, fresh garnish
Swiss Mint
Mentha × piperita 'Swiss'
A robust peppermint cultivar selected in Swiss agricultural programs for essential oil quality — high menthol, clean flavor, and it holds up unusually well when dried. A serious mint for people who take their tea seriously.
Best for: tea, drying, culinary work
Mojito Mint
Mentha × villosa
The variety bartenders actually look for. Softer and sweeter than common spearmint, which is why it holds its own against lime and rum instead of getting lost. Traditional Cuban mojitos used Mentha × villosa, known locally as Yerba Buena.
Best for: mojitos, cocktails, tea
The chocolate one
Chocolate Mint
Mentha × piperita 'Chocolate'
It's real, and it isn't a gimmick. Dark glossy leaves, often with purple stems, and a genuine chocolate-mint aroma. The chocolate note isn't flavoring — it comes from a specific ratio of menthol to menthyl acetate that the human nose maps onto chocolate. The same quirk of perception is why chocolate cosmos and chocolate dahlias smell the way they do.
Best for: baking, dessert, tea, ice cream, convincing skeptics
The fruit mints
Sweeter, softer, and mostly descended from apple mint. These are the ones you won't find at a garden center.
Apple Mint
Mentha suaveolens
Soft, slightly fuzzy leaves and gentle sweetness — mint without the punch, and the easiest one to recommend to someone who finds peppermint too sharp. Those fuzzy leaves come from fine surface hairs that help the plant hold moisture, which also makes it more drought-tolerant than most mints.
Best for: tea, cooking, beginners
Pineapple Mint
Mentha suaveolens 'Variegata'
The showpiece. Bright white-edged variegated leaves and a tropical-sweet scent that earns the name. It's the variegated cultivar of apple mint — the white margins are a stable mutation that reduces chlorophyll in part of the leaf, which is why it has to be propagated by division rather than seed.
Best for: summer drinks, garnish, ornamental planting
Banana Mint
Mentha suaveolens cultivar
Smells exactly like you'd hope — soft sweet banana over a clean mint base, without tipping into anything artificial. The aroma comes from volatile esters, the same compound class responsible for banana flavor in baking.
Best for: tea, cocktails, garnish
Strawberry Mint
Mentha × piperita cultivar
Sweet strawberry-adjacent fruitiness over clean mint. Light green leaves, vigorous grower, and one of the more pleasant plants to have near a seating area where you'll brush past it regularly.
Best for: iced tea, fruit punches, dessert garnish
Pear Mint
Mentha suaveolens cultivar
The moderate option in the fruit mint family — soft, rounded, gently pear-like without the candy quality some fruit mints lean into. If banana and berries-and-cream are too sweet for you, this is the one.
Best for: tea, light drinks
Berries and Cream Mint
Mentha hybrid cultivar
Dessert territory. A rounded sweet-cream aroma with a berry note underneath. It's the variety people ask about first once they catch a whiff of it.
Best for: tea, desserts, fresh berries
Fruit Mint
Mentha hybrid cultivar
A sweet, multi-layered fruit aroma from a vigorous hybrid with soft lime-green leaves. Hard to describe precisely because the fruit note doesn't land on any one thing — it's just pleasantly, generically fruity.
Best for: tea, drinks, dessert garnish
The citrus mints
Most belong to the citrata group, whose aroma comes from linalool — the same compound found in bergamot and lavender. That's why citrus mints often smell simultaneously citrusy and floral.
Orange Mint
Mentha × piperita var. citrata
Rich citrus-bergamot rather than simple sweet orange, with slightly darker, glossier leaves. Bergamot mint from this group was historically distilled for the Eau de Cologne fragrance tradition in France and Italy.
Best for: tea, cocktails, baking
Lime Mint
Mentha × piperita 'Lime'
Sharper and more assertive than the others — tart, bright, genuinely lime-adjacent, and it holds its scent when muddled. The lime perception comes from citral, the same aldehyde that gives lemon verbena and lemongrass their character.
Best for: gin cocktails, sparkling water
Grapefruit Mint
Mentha × piperita 'Grapefruit'
Lighter and fresher than orange mint, sweet rather than bitter. A good choice for people who want citrus character without sharpness.
Best for: sparkling drinks, fruit salads
Citrus Peel Mint
Mentha × piperita var. citrata
This one doesn't smell like citrus juice — it smells like the peel. Bright, slightly bitter, zest-like. More interesting in savory cooking than the sweeter citrus mints.
Best for: cocktails, savory cooking
The unusual ones
Basil Mint
Mentha × piperita var. citrata 'Basil'
Unmistakably a mint leaf, but crush one and you get warm, spicy-sweet basil. The overlap is real chemistry rather than suggestion — basil mint and true basil share linalool and linalyl acetate, despite being unrelated plants.
Best for: cooking, cocktails
Wintergreen Mint
Mentha × piperita cultivar
The candy-dish smell — sharp, sweet, familiar from gum and old-fashioned mints. A true Mentha that grows and spreads like the rest, bringing something genuinely different to a collection otherwise dominated by spearmint and peppermint variations.
Best for: tea, baking, candy-inspired recipes
Mountain Mint
Pycnanthemum sp. — not a true mint
Same family, different genus, and it behaves differently — clumping rather than running. More intensely aromatic than almost anything else in the garden and one of the best pollinator plants in North America; it topped Penn State's pollinator trials with a 15-week bloom window. Silvery-gray bracts around the flowers make it striking in late summer.
Best for: pollinator gardens, naturalizing, dried arrangements
How to choose
Never grown mint before? Apple mint or peppermint. Both forgiving, both useful.
Want to impress someone? Chocolate mint. Nobody believes it until they smell it.
Want it to look good? Pineapple mint or Emerald and Gold, for the variegation.
Building a bar? Mojito, Kentucky Colonel, curly spearmint, lime.
Building a tea garden? Swiss, curly spearmint, apple, orange.
Want something nobody else has? Banana, strawberry, basil, or berries and cream. These aren't at garden centers — mail order is realistically the only way to get them.
Want to feed bees? Mountain mint, and let some of your other mint flower in July.
One thing they all share
Every mint on this list spreads — underground rhizomes, steadily, in every direction. It isn't a defect. It's why one plant becomes a patch in a single season. But it's worth planning for.
Grow them in containers, sink a barrier, or give them ground you're happy to hand over. The Growing Guide covers containment along with everything else, from unboxing a bare root plant to your first harvest.
Grow some
All of these are field-grown in Brattleboro, Vermont and ship bare root — washed clean of soil, no plastic pot, ready to plant.
Not sure where to start? The Mint Duo pairs apple and chocolate — mild and surprising in one box.