Tubing to Terroir

Vermont Food & Wine

Tubing to Terroir… Maple Comes of Age

by Roger Allbee, former Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets for Vermont; Bruce Martell, former Maple Specialist for the State of Vermont; and Betty Ann Lockhart, author of Maple Sugarin’ in Vermont — A Sweet History.

The official contact for the Vermont Maple Industry is http://www.vtmaple.org.

Maple is often called the “Soul of Vermont” as it has defined the regional character and the State from the earliest of times. The Eastern Woodland Indians were said to be the first to discover that the sweet sap from the maple tree in the spring could be cooked down to make a sugar high in energy and thus as a storable source of food. They gathered the sap by cutting a slash in the tree, and boiling sap in an open clay pot over a wood fire. The early European settlers in New England learned this process, and eventually improved upon it using wood and then metal or wooden spouts and metal pots instead of clay. They continued boiling it over an open fire just as the Native Indians had done before them.

Jason Newton working at the new evaporator at Harlow’s Sugarhouse in Westminster.

Like many agricultural industries, technology has brought about multiple changes both in the sugarhouse and in methods used to collect the sap from the trees. While some maple sugar makers continue to use the “sap bucket” to collect sap from the tree during the spring season, more have embraced new technologies that make collecting the sap much easier and less labor intensive.

Thus, each sugarhouse has its own personality, some deep in the woods using buckets and heating the evaporator with wood, and others, much larger, using the latest methods. No matter what technology is used, industry standards and the Vermont Maple Law result in the production of the highest quality pure maple syrup and syrup products.

These technology changes keep Vermont in the forefront of pure maple syrup production in the Untied States, and because of these changes production has increased from where it was in the distant past. For example, in 2010, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Service, Vermont sugar makers tapped approximately three million, two hundred thousand maple trees and produced eight hundred and ninety thousand gallons of syrup. This represented forty-six percent of U.S. maple production. In 2011, a banner year, Vermont sugarmakers produced more than a million gallons of maple syrup.

The most advanced technologies employed include vacuum tubing from the tree to the sugarhouse, reverse osmosis to get the sap to a higher sugar content, and new evaporator design to recapture heat while boiling the sap. Food grade plastic spouts and tubing, connecting the trees and carrying sap to collection points, or right to the sugarhouse, was patented in 1959, and rapidly grew in the 1970’s to now, when it is the predominant method of collection, although there are sugarmakers who still use buckets. The vacuum system hurries the sap along from the tree by lowing the atmospheric pressure. Using this technology, it is possible to get twenty gallons of sap per tap or more whereas years before it would have been about ten gallons per tap. Reverse osmosis in the sugarhouse puts the sap through a membrane system that removes water from the sap, concentrating the sugar content, decreasing the boiling time, and requiring less fuel to produce a gallon of syrup. This has allowed those producers using this reverse osmosis technology to go from approximately forty gallons of sap per gallon of syrup to ten gallons of sap to produce that gallon today. Advanced evaporator design too has resulted in less fuel consumption to produce the gallon of syrup. A hood enclosure over the evaporator captures the heat from the evaporating steam and uses the heat to boil the sap more quickly.

So when a person visits one of the many sugarhouses in Vermont, or buys the maple syrup or other maple products available, think of the effort it still takes to make that gallon of syrup. Even though there have been significant strides to reduce energy use and make production more efficient there is still a significant amount of work involved in making the product. Remember too, that the focus has always been on producing something the farmer is proud to provide for the consumer. Thus, the Vermont Legislature in 1989 decreed Pure Vermont Maple to be the Official Flavor of Vermont. Vermont has some of the highest maple product standards in the United States. The state also prides itself in having innovative producers and marketers. This is why Vermont produces such a wide range of maple products today. These products go far beyond the container of syrup that was one of the few products available to our ancestors. These products include but are not limited to pure maple syrup in various containers and container sizes, maple cream, maple candy, granulated maple sugar, infused maple dips, and a vast array of other specialty products enhanced by the addition of Vermont Maple.

Yes, maple has always been the “Soul of Vermont”, and remains so today. It defines the character of the State and contributes to its economy with over four thousand jobs. It is a key part of what attracts tourists to the State during the spring of each year when the maple sap is running and the sugarmakers are boiling it into syrup. Think about planning your trip to our State of Vermont this spring and enjoy the experience of visiting one of our operating sugarhouses with their varieties of technology. You will enjoy it!

The official contact for the Vermont Maple Industry is http://www.vtmaple.org.