Peppermint Schnapps Drinks for the Cold Half of the Year

There is a bottle of peppermint schnapps in almost every house we have ever visited, and in most of them it has been there since somebody’s Christmas party several years ago.

We would like to make a case for it. Not as a novelty, and not only in December — mint is genuinely useful, and the recipes that use it well are more varied than its reputation suggests.

Two bottles, not one

The first thing to sort out is which one you actually have, because the category splits sharply and the recipes are not interchangeable.

The familiar supermarket peppermint schnapps sits around 15 to 21% ABV. It is sweet, soft, mildly minty, and it behaves like a liqueur.

Rumple Minze is 50%. It is dry, ferociously minty, and it behaves like a spirit. Pouring it into a recipe written for the gentler bottle will produce something nobody at the table asked for.

We say this with feeling.

Why mint feels cold

The cooling sensation is menthol acting on the TRPM8 receptor, which is the same receptor that responds to actual low temperatures. Your nerves genuinely cannot tell the difference — the signal arriving at the brain is identical to the one a cold drink sends.

This has a practical upshot. A mint drink served warm still tastes cool, which is why hot peppermint drinks are so satisfying in a way that, say, hot orange drinks are not. The two signals arrive together and the contrast is the pleasure.

The gentle ones

Start here if the bottle has been sitting untouched.

Alpine Sprite is peppermint schnapps and Sprite. Two ingredients, long, fizzy, and about as easy as a drink gets. We make this one in summer as often as winter.

Event Horizon blends mint chocolate ice cream, peppermint schnapps, vodka and milk into something you serve in a tall glass with a spoon. It is a grasshopper by another route and it is delicious.

Frozen Bird is Rumple Minze and bourbon. Only two things, but the bourbon’s vanilla gives the mint somewhere warm to land, and it is our favourite two-ingredient pour on this page.

The cream and cocoa ones

Dairy and mint is a pairing nobody needs persuading about.

Hot Young Lady sets Irish cream, Rumple Minze, Kahlúa and cinnamon schnapps together — coffee, mint, cream and spice, which is essentially an after-dinner course in a glass.

Eskimo Joe uses green crème de menthe alongside cinnamon schnapps, milk and Irish cream.

Christian Killer is crème de menthe, Irish cream and a high-proof spirit, and it is considerably stronger than it looks.

Mint against herbal

Jägermeister and peppermint is a combination that appears over and over in our database, and the reason is that both are aromatic without either being fruity — they share a register.

Liquid Heroine is Jäger and Rumple Minze, nothing else. Three Wise Men #3 adds vodka. Dizzy Damage brings Goldschläger, which gives you mint cooling and cinnamon warming about a second apart.

Four Jokers extends that to four liqueurs, and C4 is the overproof version of the same idea. Both are strong, and we would not put either in front of anyone who had not asked for it.

Crackerjack swaps in black sambuca, so you get anise and mint together — an unusual pairing, and a good one.

The seasonal ones

Feliz Navidad is tequila, Rumple Minze and gin. It should not work at a Christmas table and somehow it does.

Astropop layers grenadine, amaretto and Rumple Minze for the colour as much as the flavour.

Anti-Freeze #4 and Foxfire Blitz both use overproof rum alongside — these are the heavy end of the list.

Hot Shot #2 is vodka, Tabasco and peppermint schnapps, which pits TRPM8 against TRPV1 directly. It is a party trick rather than a drink, and it is a very effective one.

Making it last

Peppermint schnapps keeps almost indefinitely at the higher proof and very well at the lower, because menthol is a stable compound and both bottles carry enough sugar and alcohol to resist everything else. The bottle from three Christmases ago is fine.

What does fade is the aromatic top note, so if yours smells faintly of nothing, put it into one of the cream builds where it only needs to show up rather than lead.

Alongside this one: the cinnamon shots roundup covers the warming half of the same shelf, hot cocktail recipes covers the winter format, and the Jägermeister shooters cover the herbal partner. Recipes at CocktailBuilder.

Last modified on September 19, 2026