Spearmint
The mint of North African and Middle Eastern tea, sweeter and rounder than peppermint and much lower in menthol. The nana variety grown in Morocco is a specific cultivar selected for that use.
Identity
- Botanical name
- Mentha spicata
- Family
- Lamiaceae
- Part used
- Leaf
- Origin
- Western Asia and southeastern Europe
- Drunk in
- Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey
Character
Sweet and rounded rather than cooling, with none of peppermint’s cold bite. This is what most people who like mint tea actually like.
Notes: sweet mint, green herb
History
Grown around the Mediterranean since antiquity and carried through the Arab world with the spice trade. Its pairing with Chinese gunpowder green tea in Morocco dates from the nineteenth-century export trade, and the drink that resulted is younger than either component.
How it is drunk
Moroccan mint tea is made with gunpowder green tea, a large quantity of fresh spearmint and sugar, brewed hard and poured from height. It is a rite of hospitality across the Maghreb rather than a beverage choice, and refusing a glass is a social act.
Traditional use
The mint of the Maghreb, the Levant and Turkey, and the plant that most of the world's mint-drinking tradition actually belongs to. Its most visible form — Moroccan mint tea — is younger than either of its components and is a hospitality institution rather than a beverage choice.
3 traditions recorded, with who practises each and what each says it is for →
Production
Usually used fresh rather than dried where it is drunk most — a bunch bought the same morning. Dried spearmint is the export form and loses much of the sweetness.
Preparation
Infusion · Blended with tea
Herbal infusion (tisane)
1–2 g/100 ml · 95–100 °C · 5 min
Category-typical practice rather than a measurement for this specific botanical. Most infusions are far more tolerant of a long steep than tea is.
Common mistakes
- Substituting peppermint in a Moroccan preparation. The result is cold and harsh rather than sweet.
Related botanicals
- Peppermint — The two culinary mints, and the pair most often sold interchangeably as 'mint tea'. One is cooling, the other sweet.
- Peppermint — Sold interchangeably as 'mint tea' and chemically different. Moroccan preparations want spearmint; using peppermint makes the drink cold and harsh.
Teas this connects to
- Gunpowder green tea — Moroccan mint tea is gunpowder green tea brewed hard with a large quantity of fresh spearmint and sugar. Neither component alone is the drink.
Prepared drinks it goes into
Recipes in the catalogue that name this plant among their ingredients. The quantities and the method belong to each recipe rather than to this page.
- Maghrebi mint tea (atay) — Chinese gunpowder green tea brewed strong with a large bundle of fresh spearmint and a great deal of sugar, poured from height into small glasses. It is both a daily drink and a formal act of hospitality across North Africa, and the pour is functional as well as expressive.
Comparisons
- Peppermint vs spearmint — The two mints sold interchangeably as 'mint tea', with different chemistry and opposite characters. Which one you have decides whether a Moroccan preparation works or tastes harsh.
- Spearmint vs lemon balm — Two soft mint-family leaves, one of which tastes of mint and one of which does not. The pair that shows how wide the Lamiaceae reach beyond the flavour the family is named for.
Guides
Evidence for this page
The botanical name, family and distribution above are checked against an external authority. Mentha spicata L. — GRIN-Global Taxonomy record— retrieved and read, not countersigned by a named human. That source covers naming and distribution only. Everything else on this page — history, culture, production, flavour, preparation and buying advice — is TeaHQ’s own synthesis with no external source behind it.
Brewing parameters here are typical practice for the category rather than measurements of this plant, and each set says so.
This page makes no safety claim. It describes what Spearmint is, where it comes from and how it is prepared — not what it does to a person. The absence of a safety note here is not a statement that the plant is safe. How TeaHQ handles this.