After Eight Shot

Peppermint schnapps and crème de cacao — After Eight Dinner Mints (Rowntree's of York, 1962) in shot form, the after-8 PM convention giving the candy its name.

The After Eight Shot is a dessert shooter inspired by After Eight Dinner Mints, the dark chocolate and peppermint fondant confections produced by Rowntree's of York, England, which first launched the product in 1962. After Eight — named for the appropriate time to offer them to dinner guests, after 8 PM — quickly became synonymous with a specific form of refined British after-dinner hospitality: the thin, individually wrapped dark chocolate squares with their intensely perfumed mint fondant filling, presented in their characteristic dark green envelope packaging, became a standard gift and dinner party offering across the United Kingdom and internationally. Rowntree's, which had been founded in York in 1862 by Henry Isaac Rowntree, was acquired by Nestlé in 1988, and After Eight production continued under Nestlé ownership. The shot replicates the candy's flavor architecture with precision: peppermint schnapps provides the intensely concentrated mint oil character of the fondant filling, and chocolate liqueur (or crème de cacao) provides the bittersweet dark chocolate coating's character. The resulting combination is one of the most flavor-accurate candy-inspired shots in the bartending canon, and it gained particular commercial traction at British and European bars as an after-dinner shot that directly evoked the confection's specific occasion.