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adderbolt - Jack posted an update Thursday, Nov 3, 2011, 1:26am EDT, 13 years, 12 months ago
Why the Cheapest Maple Syrup Tastes Best
The market for maple syrup is very odd. The thin, pale Grade A Light Amber syrup commands the highest prices. The thick syrup marked Grade B bursts with maple flavor, but sells at a significant discount. Why does the nominally inferior grade offer decidedly superior flavor? The answer lies in the history of maple syrup. The sap that runs at the beginning of the season, with the spring thaw, is clear. Twenty to thirty gallons, boiled down, will yield a gallon of light amber syrup. As the season extends, the sap grows watery. More of it must be boiled down. Concentrating that sap also makes late-season syrup darker, thicker, and more flavorful.
Early colonists were less interested in liquid syrup than in granular sugar. The pure, white imported cane sugar was an expensive luxury. Maple sugar offered an affordable substitute. These colonists took the concentrated maple sap and poured it into conical molds, refining it into white sugar loaves The clearest syrups and whitest sugars commanded premium prices.
After the Revolution, Americans looked at the maple tree in a new light. Here was a commodity that could compete in a global market. It tapped an abundant resource, required only a small amount of labor, and used supplies most farmers already owned. Best of all, it would destroy the market for Caribbean sugar cane, produced by slaves laboring in horrifying conditions. But all of these efforts failed commercially. As a refined commodity maple sugar simply could not match the low-priced products of the cane plantations. The late-season sap, with its strong flavor, was not capable of attracting consumers who had access to more refined alternatives.
Most maple syrup continued to be turned into sugar by frugal farm families for use as a home sweetener. And as a symbol of freedom, it remained potent. People shunned the products of slave labor, and sought out maple sugar. From a Vermont almanac in 1844. "So long as the maple forests stand suffer not your cup to be sweetened by the blood of slaves." But by the end of the nineteenth century, the Department of Agriculture scorned the idea of refining maple sap into white sugar, noting that maple syrup was "prized for their peculiar flavor, and are luxuries rather than staple articles of the daily diet."
The emphasis on a light, delicate flavor made the product susceptible to adulteration. Syrup was cut with glucose, sorghum, or corn. Some purveyors relied on appearance alone, boiling brown sugar. So maple syrup became a symbol in a crusade to secure the authenticity of the food supply and helped rally support for the Pure Food and Drug Act. The law was passed in 1906, and the USDA set about cleaning up the nation's grocery shelves.
However consumers sought out cheaper alternatives. Pancake syrups proliferated. Brands like Log Cabin pitched themselves by stressing the science and research that had gone into their production. The big boom came after the Second World War, with the introduction of brands backed with corporate heft, like Aunt Jemima and Mrs Butterworth which included only trace amounts of actual maple syrup. The old dream of the maple replacing the sugar cane had been reversed. Sugary syrups now threatened to push the maple off of American shelves.
Production declined steadily from the beginning of the century into the 1970s, but in recent decades has rebounded. Small producers boosted their efforts to market their wares. And many others felt the call back to the land, inspired in part by Helen and Scott Nearing's Maple Sugar Book, equal parts manual and manifesto. Sugaring is still a seasonal sideline, a way to earn a little cash and it fills a crucial cultural role. As an ode and an explanation, Noel Perrin's Amateur Sugar Maker remains unsurpassed. Sugaring, Perrin observed, "is not really a commercial operation. It is that happiest of combinations, a commercial affair which is also an annual rite, even an act of love."
And, as a result, grade inflation has come to the world of maple syrup. The industry has proposed that all syrup sold at retail be relabeled Grade A, and then sorted into four colors: Golden, Amber, Dark, and Very Dark. No longer will the weakest syrup be assigned a higher mark for approaching the perfect purity of utter blandness, or the most intensely flavorful syrup get graded down for daring to taste like maple. The new system will eliminate the current discrimination against darker syrup. By 2013, the new international standard should be fully adopted, and consumers given the clear choice of syrups. So if you happen to relish the taste of maple syrup, you may want to find a bottle of Grade B while you still can. Soon the rarest, most flavorful syrup will likely command at least as dear a price as its more abundant cousins.
