‘It’s Everyone’s Thing’: A Tale of Sugar and Community
By Shikha Kaiwar
Long before European settlers arrived, the Abenaki were sugaring—collecting sap from the maple tree in springtime and boiling it down to condense the sugar. Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash.
You’ll notice the bottle first—smooth and beige, with a tiny vestigial handle at the top, a cheeky reminder of the earthenware jugs used to store the syrup in the past. The bottle’s narrow mouth balloons into a heavy bottom half that’s almost completely covered by the label, which proudly proclaims, “State of Vermont pure maple syrup.” There are images of a log cabin in the woods, snowy-roofed, bright red barns, miles of green mountains, and farmers (who are nearly always white) collecting sap.
Two things are noticeably missing.
The first is any mention of the Abenaki people, who had been cultivating maple syrup for thousands of years before the arrival of European settlers. The second is any descriptors of region and taste. Because like wine, Vermont maple syrup has a rich, flavorful past that deserves to be known. And Alex Cotnoir, an Abenaki from Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, has an idea of how to do that.
Cotnoir is part of the tribe who calls Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom home. His grandfather is on the tribal council and originally from the Odanak reservation in Quebec; his grandmother is from the same reservation.
In 1949, Vermont’s governor gave the Northeast Kingdom its name as a way to revive tourism and recognize this beautiful, culturally distinct area. Located around present-day Barton, there is a strong French/Quebecoi influence with lots of movement back and forth across the border. For many years, it was a summer haven for East Coasters from as far as Washington D.C. One of the last landlocked salmon fisheries persists here, along with ample dairy farming, cheesemaking, lumber and, of course, maple syrup.
Vermont is the nation’s top producer of maple syrup, and within the state, most of that production originates in its Northeast Kingdom. Cotnoir attributes that to the Abenaki’s deep roots in making syrup while carefully preserving the land.
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Long before European settlers arrived, the Abenaki were sugaring—collecting sap from the maple tree in springtime and boiling it down to condense the sugar. Written and oral records note the use of birch bark baskets to collect sap, which were left overnight to freeze, creating a natural osmosis process where the water on top freezes and gets ladeled out to increase the concentration of sugar.
Sugaring is a long process; Cotnoir recounts how growing up, his family would start the boiling process in the morning before he went to school and finish after dinner. He and his sister would ride the snowmobile over to add sap from the collection tank and then measure the density of the syrup to get to the right concentration of sugar. At the end of the day, this process produced around one and a half gallons of syrup, enough for them and for family and friends in the community.
Cotnoir’s family isn’t the only one making syrup at home. Many Abenaki and non-Abenaki families do the same from their garages or sugar houses they own.
“Vermonters joke that maple syrup runs in their veins, just like it runs in the trees,” Cotnoir says. “And you know it’s springtime because you’ll see the clouds of steam evaporating from people’s houses or the sugaring houses. That’s the time when you know you can just stop by anyone’s place, start up a conversation, and chat for hours next to the evaporator vat to stay warm.”
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With so many people making their own, it’s easy to taste through and see that maple syrup, just like wine and coffee and chocolate, has terroir. The Abenaki have been well aware of this for centuries. Just like grape vines, where and how the maple trees grow affect how the sap will taste.
Cotnoir’s family taps trees on a southern-facing slope that receive a lot of sunlight during the day, producing syrup with cinnamon undertones. Others produce syrup that can taste like nutmeg, molasses, banana, honey, coffee and more. Maple itself has more than 150 chemical compounds. These come not just from sugar, but also from amino acids and other compounds found in the wood, the soil, the air, the animals in the area—essentially the entire forest ecosystem.
“Maple syrup is the forest,” Cotnoir says.
Even trees growing right next to each other can produce different syrup depending on when they are tapped, how long the sap is boiled for and the individual storyline of that tree. Cotnoir remembers a tree that was struck by lightning and bent in half. It produced very little sap, but once boiled down, the syrup was a deep yellow color, super sweet and tasted strongly of cinnamon. Stories like this are often overlooked in the wider consumer market.
Its accessibility is one of many things that makes maple syrup so unique, Cotnoir says. Per ounce, maple syrup is more expensive than wine, but it’s easier to make and more commonly used.
“It’s everybody’s thing,” Cotnoir says. In Vermont, most people can go outside, tap a maple tree in their backyard, and make syrup. You don’t need to have a large vineyard or years of experience, or even any fancy tools; even with just a drill and a plastic bag, you can collect sap and make syrup at home.
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The important thing, Cotnoir says, is to give people a vocabulary to talk about maple syrup in the same way as they do wine, and to educate them that maple syrup is much more than for pouring on pancakes.
The Abenaki use maple syrup in a variety of ways depending on the tasting notes of the sap—as a rub for venison, duck or fish; sauteed with fiddleheads; and as an additive to herbal remedies. It’s an everyday ingredient that seasons and brightens food while bringing the community together and connecting them to the lands upon which their indigenous histories have been built.
These lands, called N'dakinna in the Abenaki language, have been home to this community for thousands of years. A key facet of cultivating maple syrup is to do so sustainably in order to protect N'dakinna and pass its beauty down from generation to generation. The Abenaki have been protecting the forest ecosystem for generations on their own. Without the forest, there is no terroir.
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In the early 20th century, the forests were at risk of losing their unique diversity, as non-Indigenous farmers cleared out other tree species to grow maple trees. Birches and elms started to disappear, and with them the natural protection that they gave maples—biodiversity increases tree immunity and protects it against pests, allowing it to live longer and sustain the forest flora and fauna.
In the last few decades as climate change has come to the forefront, and as large-scale production of syrup became popular, Vermont created a rigid forest management system to protect its biodiversity. Today, 25 percent of the trees in the area must be a non maple species, and maples must be at least 54 inches and 10 inches in diameter before they can be tapped.
The Bird Friendly Maple Project, created in 2015, allows producers to work with specialized conservation biologists to create a forest environment where local bird species can thrive. For maple trees, these birds provide a buffer against invasive insects and add another unique element of terroir in the syrup’s final product.
As large scale production methods increase, they cut out the community aspect and any semblance of terroir. The largest producer, Sweet Tree, has more than 450,000 taps spread over the state and multiple roaring boilers, each the size of a freight engine. It uses natural gas, not wood, to boil the sap, a much more efficient method that yields a gallon every 20 minutes or so.
Contrast that with Cotnoir’s family which has 43 taps in a concentrated area. While these larger operations do purchase syrup from locals to aid in their production, they combine it together to create a “standardized”product that costs much less and loses the regional, diverse tasting notes.
“This is what the milk industry does,” notes Cotnoir. “Milk is all mixed together from different regions to become homogeneous. The same thing is happening with maple syrup.”
At its extreme, very large-scale producers are producing corn-syrup-based imitation maple syrup designed to mimic high quality Vermont syrup at a fraction of the cost. They use imagery associated with small town life, like log cabins, and that, along with their lower prices, draw in consumers who don’t know the difference.
“Real maple syrup is going to be more expensive, because it reflects the hard work that goes into it,” says Cotnoir.
That work includes not just boiling the sap into syrup, but maintaining the forest landscape as well. Knockoff brands are produced on lands cleared for corn, lands that become eroded over time from overuse and lack of biodiversity.
Large-scale producers of real maple syrup also have more resources to become USDA organic certified, which is appealing to consumers but can be difficult for Abenaki locals to do. It costs more than $1,000 to complete the certification process, and they would need to upgrade their facilities to replaster the walls, cover exposed light bulbs and ensure that the flooring is the right material (gravel, not dirt) and thickness. Abenaki people often use the traditional defoamer of animal fat to prevent the sap from boiling over, which also doesn’t meet certification standards. And one of the requirements forbids conducting a “whole tree harvest,” or the cutting down of a whole tree. The Abenaki periodically cut down trees for use in traditional crafts, wigwams and baskets, thus presenting another challenge. Given the small size of the sugaring operations and the familial aspects of sugaring, getting organic certification is financially unfeasible.
Today, maple syrup is common in many American households. Knowing its history helps sustain the indigenous community and acknowledges their deep, generational connections to the lands that make up America.
“Otherwise, it’s another form of erasure,” says Cotnoir, “and another false narrative of White settlers coming in to ‘help’ natives because we didn’t have the knowledge or skills.”
Cotnoir encourages consumers to look deeper and challenge their palates and their relationship to syrup. Small, family-owned operations highlight the terroir and community that get lost in large-scale production and tell a story about the lands and the Abenaki people who sustained them.
