Making the Grade: Why the Cheapest Maple Syrup Tastes Best

As our sense of American identity has evolved, the labels on our syrup, long a symbol of American authenticity, have not always kept up

The market for maple syrup offers an odd inversion. The thin, pale fluid labeled Fancy or Grade A Light Amber commands the highest prices. It is the white bread of condiments, an inoffensive accompaniment to more flavorful fare. The robust, thick syrup marked Grade B fairly bursts with maple flavor, but sells at a significant discount. So why does the nominally inferior grade offer decidedly superior flavor? The answer lies in the history of maple syrup, a product that has long served as a symbol of American authenticity. As our sense of American identity has evolved, our syrup labels have not always kept pace.

Early European settlers learned the art of sugaring from the native peoples of North America, who first tapped the maple trees, boiling their sap down to make a sweetener. The sap that runs at the beginning of the season, with the spring thaw, is sweet and clear. Twenty or thirty gallons, boiled down, will yield a gallon of light amber syrup. As the season extends, the sap thins out and grows watery. More of it must be boiled down to yield a syrup of equal sweetness. The last of the sap may yield only a sixtieth of its weight in syrup. Concentrating the sugar also concentrates all the other substances in the sap, making late-season syrup also darker, thicker, and more flavorful.

The colonists, though, were less interested in liquid syrup than in granular sugar. The pure, white, crystallized product of sugar cane was still an expensive luxury, imported from plantations in the West Indies. Maple sugar offered an accessible and affordable substitute. These colonists, out on the imperial periphery, wanted to demonstrate that their fledgling society was just as sophisticated and elegant as that of the metropole. They took the concentrated maple sap and poured it into conical molds, refining it into white sugar-loaves like those produced in Britain from cane syrup. Maple sugar, a distinctively American product, was touted as the equal of the sugar served in the most elegant Old World salons. The clearest syrups and whitest sugars, which betrayed the least hint of their rustic origins, commanded premium prices.