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| Vermont Fancy |
| Light Amber Color, Delicate Maple Bouquet |
| Delightfully mild maple flavor, excellent on ice cream or on food which permit its subtle flavor to be appreciated - a gourmet choice, and the preferred grade for candies and other maple specialties. |
Some History of Maple Syrup Making
Products of the sugar and black maple hardwood trees were well known to First Nations people of the Lawrence and Great Lakes areas before Europeans arrived. Other maples also produced the basic sap could be boiled into syrup, but, because the sugar content was much lower, they were used far less. Hence, maple syrup country was that where hard maples grew numerously: parts of present Maritimes, Southern Quebec and Ontario, upstate New York, New England, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The making of the syrup and sugar was and is a North American activity based primarily on the native deciduous forests spread broadly throughout eastern Canada.
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| Grade A Medium Amber |
| Medium Amber Color, Pronounced Maple Bouquet |
| Characteristic maple flavor; popular for table and all around use. |
| Grade A Dark Amber |
| Dark Amber Color, Robust Maple Bouquet |
| Characteristic maple flavor; popular for table and all around use. |
| Grade B Dark Amber |
| The Strongest & Darkest Table Grade Maple Syrup |
| Some folks prefer this syrup for the table, and its stronger maple flavor makes it the best grade for cooking. |
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The people of the First Nations had an age-old collecting technique. As the warming days of early spring brought sap rising in the maple woods, they cut a diagonal slash in each lower trunk and inserted a hollow reed through which the sap dripped into a small bark container. These were subsequently taken to bigger bark or log containers where fire-heated stones were dropped into them until the sap had boiled down to a dark, sweet syrup often referred to as "sweet water," especially when used in the cooking of venison. Further boiling produced maple sugar. European settlers basically kept to this pattern, merely replacing bark vessels with either wood or metal pails and large cast-iron kettles hung by chains over boiling fires.
Indeed, for many subsequent generations throughout both French and English Canada, the "maple moon" month or the "sugaring off" period would remain a special occasion on the country calendar. Then, in the melting days and freezing nights from March into April (depending on local weather), rural families would gather at their shanties in the sugar bush to collect and boil the sap - and to make maple taffy or maple candy for young and old alike by pouring syrup with the consistency of melted wax out onto a clean, white snowbank.
Only around the 1940s did methods change. A modernized maple syrup industry introduced networks of plastic pipes leading from the trees to a central evaporating plant. Despite this, market demands exceeded supply, and prices soared.
Today, especially in Southern Quebec and in eastern Ontario, maple syrup and maple sugar continue to add their flavour (literally) to a distinctive Canadian farm-and-bush industry.
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Vermont Maple Syrup.
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