Maple: A taste like no other

Maple syrup’s flavor is unique and complex in its pure form. Now, enterprising Vermont farmers are crafting infusions of new flavors, from smoked chili to pumpkin spice.

West Wardsboro farmer and sugar-maker Brent Newell of Newell Hill Farm established in 1798, is certain that the variations on maple syrup are not a fad but rather a gastronomic delight. (Photo by Anita Rafael)

By Anita Rafael

Let’s start with a true confession from my approximately 10,000 taste buds: I have not cultivated a highly sophisticated palate. Not for fine wine, not for gourmet coffee, not for luxury chocolate, and not for chicken noodle soup. But I grew up in New England, so I am absolutely certain that I know what genuine maple syrup tastes like. Like remembering that rosy perfume that my Nana wore, like Proust recalling his précieuse madeleines, I can easily recognize that rich maple flavor. It starts with a silky sweetness, and then there’s a toffeeish-buttery half note, followed by the swish of that darkened gold that can only be one thing and nothing else: maple.

Think about it—there is nothing anyone can name that tastes like maple except maple. If there’s maple syrup in a recipe, say a cookie, cake frosting, or even caramelized under the broiler onto a crispy strip of bacon, I can always taste the distinct, concentrated sugary-woody mapleness no matter what. Nonetheless, I have rookie taste buds. Analyzing the taste of maple syrup to a profound, and perhaps somewhat intellectual level, using methods similar to wine tasting, Canadian taste testers “found” 91 flavors in it—everything from vanilla, floral, and ligneous to burnt, foreign, and fermented. A depth of knowledge which, I suppose, explains that maple leaf on the Canadian flag…

But here’s what happened. Not long ago I sampled bourbon barrel-aged maple syrup for the first time, straight up, right out of its flask-shaped bottle. After that, I tipped into a jug of cinnamon-infused maple syrup to take a taste.

Suddenly all hell broke loose in my understanding of what maple is or isn’t supposed to be. I chickened out before taste testing maple syrups of any other ilk: smoked chili, pumpkin spice, lavender, or cherry-berry. Clearly, it was time to confer with the experts, both the traditional sugarmakers who do not seek to improve on the finest nectar that Vermont’s woodlands have to offer, and those innovators bent on teasing me with spicy, herbal, or fruity maple syrup infusions I would never dream up on my own.

Helen Robb knows what she likes

Among the most dedicated sugarmakers in the Brattleboro area is the Robb family; Helen, Charlie the elder, Charlie the younger, and fifth-generation 20-somethings. Helen Robb and I got to chatting about innovations in maple syrup, and right off the bat, Helen simply said this: “I am a maple purist.”

Looking around at the maple-leaf shaped bottles and big glass jugs neatly lined up on the shelves and windowsills in the Robb Family Farm store, a mile and a half up an unpaved lane on Ames Hill Road in West Brattleboro, I saw not one of the products is anything but the traditional syrup, available in all grades from fancy, Grade A medium amber, and Grade A dark amber to Grade B. “It’s not that we won’t get into making maple syrup infusions and flavors,” she said, and then after a long pause, added, “someday. It’s just that maple syrup tastes so good without the extras, and I love it so much.”

A visitor from Ohio gave the Robb family these two hand-carved wooden signs. Helen Robb says simply: “I am a maple purist.” (Photo: Karen Irvine)

Helen, a petite woman with snow-white hair and who is generous with her warm smile and gentle laugh, tends the farm store attached to the Robb Farm sugarhouse. “We have 5,500 taps right now, mostly on tubing, except for the sugar maples along the road,” she said. “That’s where we put out about 200 sap buckets.”

Because I appear to be more of a tourist than a local, she had to teasingly educate me by saying that “People don’t like it when you run the tubing from tree to tree across the middle of the road.”

“Oh, I see,” I said, looking out the shop window at the maples that line the public way bisecting the farm. Helen estimated that the family’s farm store and sugarhouse attract more than 1,200 visitors a year. She said, “People find us online and drive up Ames Hill for tastings and to buy our syrup or grass-fed beef, but they usually stay an hour or two longer to walk around.” It’s easy to figure out why they linger—the property is one of the prettiest, most traditional, and best kept Vermont farmsteads you will ever see.

Dennis Baker worked it out

On the other side of the maple syrup conversation, there’s Dennis Baker of East Dummerston. He began sugaring on his 28-acre farm in 1984. A clever man, he’s figured out how to sugar throughout the woods up and down the side roads in Dummerston Center without having to pay any taxes on all that land: He’s run tubing and taps to hundreds of his neighbor’s maple trees, which were once part of Dummerston’s many working farms, and are now prime residential properties. The homeowners are glad for his annual gift of syrup made right there in town. The rest of us may buy Baker Farm products at the Vermont Country Deli in Brattleboro.

“For me, this is more or less a hobby that got way out of hand,” he said with a twinkle of ancestral Irish humor. His wife Debbie, told me otherwise, saying sugaring runs in his blood. It was a treat for me to listen to the stories of Dennis’s boyhood adventures during the 1940s and ‘50s as he tagged along with the farmers who sugared these same hillsides long ago.

An early trendsetter, Dennis began making bourbon barrel-aged maple syrup eight years ago, thanks to a nudge from his son who works for Harpoon Brewery, out of Windsor. “Because of my son’s business travels for Harpoon,” he said, “we had a connection with a distillery in Kentucky, which was the ideal source for empty barrels. So I got on the bandwagon and tried making a batch. I started with just one 50-gallon barrel. It’s not difficult to make the aged maple syrup, but it is important to always keep the entire barrel chilled throughout the aging process. The rest is just patience.”

Baker Farm’s customers have learned to be patient as well, knowing that Dennis is a small-batch producer. In certain years he’s sold out and kept a waiting list of folks who craved his products. Unlocking the big sliding door to the sugarhouse that is under the tree line at the uphill side of a sloping field, just a short walk from his kitchen door, Dennis paused to tell me, “So far, I haven’t met maple any syrup snobs who would only use traditional syrup and nothing else. Everyone is interested in trying a new twist on a classic.”

Dennis Baker of East Dummerston, began sugaring on his 28-acre farm in 1984. An early trendsetter he began making bourbon barrel-aged maple syrup eight years ago, thanks to a nudge from his son who works for Harpoon Brewery in Windsor and had a connection with a distillery in Kentucky—the idea source for barrels.

Brent Newell: variations on a theme

West Wardsboro farmer and sugarmaker Brent Newell of Newell Hill Farm, established in 1798, is another fellow who’s been out in the sugarhouse experimenting. Brent is tall, in his 60s, and possesses that “don’t say much” rural demeanor that makes you think he might been the sort of country-bred gentlemen Robert Frost sought to befriend when he lived in Vermont in the 1920s.

Watching Brent in his plaid flannel shirt and suspendered work pants tending the Randall Linebacks out at the graying old cow barn, he doesn’t strike me as the kind of farmer who would be caught out on a limb risking something new. But two years ago Brent did make the leap and began aging his first small batches of bourbon-flavored maple syrup. He sells his products in an upscale country gift store called The Stratton Parsonage, which is run by his wife, Lorraine. (She delights in giving customers free tastings year round so they can decide for themselves which kind they would like on their pancakes and waffles. No pressure!)

Brent said, “I’m getting ready to make cinnamon infused maple syrup soon, and after that, I’ve been thinking about making coffee infused.” I had to wonder—is the Newell family’s great-great-great-grandfather spinning in his grave, as they say, because of what’s being done to maple syrup at this venerable farm? Maybe not. Reminding me that sugaring is a way to make a living in Vermont, Brent said, “I did it because it was time to expand my product line,” even though each year he sells out of every drop of the hundreds of gallons of maple syrup he makes in his backwoods sugarhouse. It’s located a cold snowy mile into the woods from the farmhouse, so he rides out there on his tractor, while minding his 1,800 taps. He, too, is now looping miles of plastic tubing through the forest. Again I was left wondering—what would the Newell ancestors have thought of a sugarbush that, as the author Noel Perrin put it in his classic 1972 book “Amateur Sugar Maker,” “looks like the intensive care unit of some outdoor hospital.”

“One thing I learned the hard way,” Brent said, “is that the empty bourbon barrels from different distilleries can have very different flavors. In any case, there’s no alcohol in the barrel-aged maple syrup no matter how long it’s in the oak—only the bourbon aroma and flavor.”

Like Dennis Baker, Brent Newell is certain that the variations on maple syrup are not a fad but rather a gastronomic delight that, because the flavor combinations are infinite, will gain a bigger market share. Brent said, “You can infuse syrup or age it with whatever your imagination comes up with.”

Imagination! Will my imagination ever push me to dip into a jug of something like rum barrel-aged bacon-habanero-ginger-cocoa maple syrup? Perhaps—but on my waffles, I think I will always prefer maple-maple-maple maple syrup.

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All the Details

Robb Family Farm and Farm Store

822 Ames Hill Road, West Brattleboro

http://www.robbfamilyfarm.com

15 minutes from downtown Brattleboro

Newell Hill Farm

Newell Hill Road, West Wardsboro

http://www.newellsugarhouse.com

10 minutes from Mount Snow Resort in Dover

The Stratton Parsonage Gift Shop

685 Stratton-Arlington Road, Stratton

http://www.strattonparsonage.com

15 minutes from Mount Snow Resort in Dover

Baker Farm

916 East-West Road, East Dummerston

http://www.bakerfarmmaplesyrup.com

Baker Farm maple products are sold at Vermont Country Deli, 436 Western Avenue in Brattleboro

Miscellany

Maple Open House Weekend

http://www.vermontmaple.org
(Visit their recipe page!)

🍁 The weekend of March 20–21 is when we celebrate Vermont’s sugar makers as they open the doors of their sugarhouses, inviting visitors in to experience and enjoy how pure Vermont maple syrup is made.