Where does Maple syrup come from?
Maple syrup comes from northeastern North America, from Quebec and the woodlands around it. Indigenous peoples of the region were the first to boil maple sap down into syrup and sugar, and today Quebec alone makes about 72% of the world's maple syrup.
Sap in the spring thaw
Maple trees store starch through the winter, and in late winter and early spring it turns into sugar that rises in the sap. Indigenous peoples of the northeast used it long before Europeans arrived. The Algonquians cut V-shaped notches in the trunks at the spring thaw and led the sap along reeds or bark into clay buckets or birch-bark baskets. They left it out on cold nights, threw away the ice that formed on top, then boiled the rest down in clay pots.
Settlers learn to tap
Indigenous people showed the arriving colonists how to tap the maples during the spring thaw, and by 1680 European settlers and fur traders were harvesting maple products, drilling tapholes with augers instead of cutting the bark. Until the 19th century maple was valued mainly as a source of sugar, because cane sugar had to be imported from the West Indies. Around the time of the American Civil War, cane sugar took over in the United States, and producers turned their efforts to syrup.
Quebec's sugar shacks
Until the 1930s the United States made most of the world's maple syrup. Today Canada makes more than three-quarters of it, almost all in Quebec, where producers work under quotas and their federation even keeps reserves of syrup. In a sugar shack, or cabane à sucre, 20 to 50 volumes of sap are boiled down to make one volume of syrup, which in Canada must be at least 66 per cent sugar.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org ↗ · americanindianmagazine.org ↗
