Mmm… maple syrup. Sounds sexier than ‘xylem sap’, doesn't it? Which, botanically speaking, is actually what it is. There’s more than a little romance around this most Canadian of products – yep, that’s a maple leaf adorning their striking national flag. Most of the world’s maple syrup (a whopping two thirds) comes from Quebec, with Ontario and the American states of Vermont, Maine and New York responsible for the rest. There are about 132 species of maple, but only three types are used for syrup; the black maple, red maple and sugar maple. 

Maple trees store starch in their trunks before winter, converting it to sugar that rises in the sap during spring. Maple sap is extracted via holes bored into the tree trunks through a process called ‘tapping’. Syrup is produced when the watery sap is concentrated by boiling; approximately 150 litres of sap is required to produce just 3.75 litres of maple syrup, with a single tree producing up to 56 litres per year. The production of the sap relies on very specific weather conditions – freezing nights followed by warm spring days – and to produce sap, a tree has to be 40–50 years old. This is because, to cope with being tapped, the trunk needs to have a diameter of at least 25 cm.

Once tapped, it can’t handle the process again until it grows another 12 cm in diameter. Maple syrups are graded according to density, translucency and colour, and the best quality ones are pale. The highest quality syrup is collected during the first runs, with the quality slowly degrading over the month-long collecting season. Sucrose is the main sugar present and, in Canada, maple syrup must contain at least a 66 percent sugar content to be counted as the real thing. Fake maple syrups are based on cheap corn syrup, caramel colouring and cellulose gum, and lack the suave subtlety of the genuine article. Maple syrup, on the other hand,  contains antioxidants and minerals like zinc, manganese, calcium and potassium? So as if you needed any more reasons to consume maple syrup, it’s actually good for you. Or good-ish for you. At least not as bad for you as sugar and some other sweeteners.