Peppermint is the flavor everyone thinks they know — candy cane, toothpaste, the inside of a York wrapper. Real peppermint, steeped into cane syrup, is a different animal: cool and green and clean, more garden than confectionery. That's what's in this bottle, made in Portland with actual peppermint and nothing pretending to be it.

It's the quiet workhorse of the holiday bar — a splash turns coffee into a peppermint mocha, bourbon and crushed ice into a wintry julep, and vodka into something that tastes like the first cold morning of December. Off-season it's just as happy in a Grasshopper, a Stinger, or a tall glass of soda water when someone wants a drink but not the proof.

Once opened, refrigerate and use within 90 days — unopened, it keeps for two years from the date of manufacture.