Maple Showdown

Winter already seems like it ended a million years ago. But it hasn’t been that long since there was snow on the ground. For a while we had a long stretch where the days were warm but the nights dipped below freezing. And that was great for the maple producers, as those are the conditions required for the sap to flow.

Now we’ve got maple syrup, which apparently is a spring food even though its flavors are most often married with the harvest foods of fall. Maple and ramps or maple with fiddleheads sounds a lot less appealing that maple with butternut squash.

Maybe there were spring maple recipes once upon a time that fell out of favor after we became disconnected from the seasons. I have no idea.

What I do know is that this year I decided to try a couple of different maple syrups and pit them against one another in head-to-head showdowns. This is far from a comprehensive review. I’m just one guy. And I’m not even all that into sweets. But I can’t resist a good tasting.

First a word on tasting.

Tasting is hard. Yes, it gets easier the more you do it. But there are a staggering quantity of flavor components in certain foods, and untangling them takes patience and the audacity to proclaim that one syrup reminds you of crushed leaves.

The thing is, it’s easier to taste components of a certain food when you are comparing more than one of them at the same time. That way you can go back and forth, from one to the other. In doing so, their similarities fade away, and leave you with a clearer perception of their differences.

When it comes to maple syrup I have a prejudice for the darker Grade B variety. So on one recent weekend at the Schenectady Greenmarket I picked up two different bottles from this season’s crop. The first one came from Uncle Pat’s. The second one came from Cornell Farm. Both were Grade B.

My expectation was that the two syrups would be more or less the same.

But wow, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Even though both were Grade B, and from the current crop, they were entirely different colors.

Uncle Pat’s was lighter in color and quite cloudy. Cornell Farm’s looked more like what I was expecting in a Grade B maple syrup. It was dark amber, with reddish auburn highlights and great clarity.

But that’s not where the differences ended. Uncle Pat’s smelled more of toasted marshmallows while Cornell Farm’s reminded me of burnt sugar (but in a good way). Uncle Pat’s was decidedly more viscous, but it also had an earthy note in the mid palate that I wasn’t crazy about.

Of these two, it was Cornell Farm’s that was giving me more of what I wanted in a Grade B maple syrup.

Now what about Grade A? After all, there are a lot of people who swear by it. Perhaps my preference for Grade B is driven by ideology. Surely I should taste some side by side in the quiet of my own home, where I could adequately concentrate on the important task at hand.

Well, a friend of mine knows the people behind Tap House Syrup, and she gave me a bottle of their Grade A medium amber to try. Their packaging is kind of brilliant, especially for someone like me who isn’t too keen on plastic bottles.

This maple syrup comes in twelve-ounce brown glass beer bottles. Once you pop the cap, there’s a cork tied onto the neck of the bottle that you can use to seal your syrup back up. It’s really quite clever.

My favorite part about this syrup is how it smells. It reminds me of the wood burning stove at my favorite bed and breakfast in northern California. The syrup itself, though, is incredibly light. To call this a medium amber is a stretch as the syrup in my glass poured a pale flaxen color with hints of gleaming gold.

But its subtle smokiness is great. Still, it’s easy for it to be overwhelmed by stronger flavors. So this might be reserved for your most delicate pancakes. That or maybe a very light and fluffy waffle. French toast with its butter-browned surfaces would surely eclipse the nuances of this maple syrup.

The Grade B is for those who want some real assertive flavors. Something that says, “I am maple, love me.” And when I’m reaching for a bottle of maple syrup, that’s me. But while my kids would gladly pour Grade B syrup on ice cream, I’d much prefer a drizzle of roasted pumpkin seed oil and a sprinkle of sea salt.

Damn, that stuff is great.