Vermont Made…

You gotta watch where your pure Vermont maple syrup is coming from.

If you bought yours on eBay from Bernard Coleman, it may have been made in Rhode Island.

And, oh, yeah, it was probably not sugared off in a way that would have been recognizable to, say, Grandma Moses. No, Bernard Coleman didn’t have to tap a tree, wait for the sap to rise, and haul his buckets to the sugaring off shed. He brewed his maple syrup up at home from water, sugar, and maple flavoring. (Reminding me of the scam uncovered a few years ago, in which some locals were bottling up water as Vermont Crystal Pure, filling jugs via hose from their bathtub in Dorchester.)

Too bad for him that an echt Vermonter paid $220.50 for a batch for his wife. Like true Vermonters, they new their terroir:

The buyer’s wife, who makes specialty items out of the syrup, determined it was not real, based on the look, smell, and taste of the product. (Source: Boston.com)

They took the bathtub syrup to the Vermont Department of Ag and Consumer Protection, which confirmed their suspicion. It then became a Federal case:

An investigation by the US Food and Drug Administration and the US Department of Agriculture found that a seller, identified as Coleman, was buying large quantities of maple flavoring from a supply store in Rhode Island.

Ah, in other places, terrorists buy up supplies of fertilizer to make bombs; in New England, faux terroirists buy up supplies of maple flavoring to doctor up sugar water and palm it off as bona fide maple syrup.

Coleman confessed, and has just been:

….sentenced to two years of probation for “introducing adulterated food into interstate commerce with the intent to defraud or mislead,” the US attorney’s office in Vermont said today in a statement.

There is, of course, a big difference between maple syrup and breakfast or table syrup, which I appreciated in one direction growing up, and the other direction once I reached the age of tasteful reason.

I did not grow up in a real maple syrup house-hold. Even in my day, Vermont Maid was Vermont Maid Syrup with “the real maple sugar flavor you’ve longed for!” As we see from this ad, like me, vintage 1949. (Forget Mrs. Butterworth. Forget Log Cabin. I’m quite sure we weren’t a Vermont Maid family because it was a New England-y thing. More than likely, it was because if was the only breakfast syrup sold at Morris Market and/or the cheapest.)

We probably had pancakes or French toast once a week, so I poured plenty Vermont Maid on.

I remember the first time I tasted real maple syrup.

Our family had made a summer-time day trip to Vermont – we went through Bennington and Chester and, I believe, stopped at some site that had something to do with Ethan Allen. The Revolutionary War hero, not the furniture store. And, somewhere along the line, bought a tin of authentic, Vermont maple syrup.

Ptui! I didn’t like it.

It was insufficiently sweet. Insufficiently thick.

Hand me the Vermont Maid Syrup, please. That was all the  maple flavor I longed for.

My tastes are more sophisticated these days. And not that I have pancakes or anything that requires maple syrup all that often, but when I do, I’ll go with the real deal. I have some in the fridge now, and just did a taste test. That stuff is good. Makes me want to pop an Eggo in the toaster oven.

A New England Tradition: The full flavored taste of Vermont Maid Syrup has been a New England Tradition for over 50 years, and tastes more like real Maple Syrup than any other table syrup. (Source: BG Foods.)

It may taste more like the real deal than “any other table syrup,” but – price be damned – I say accept no substitute!

All this, of course, if making me crave maple walnut ice cream, another New England fave, and maple sugar candy, which I have once a year, picking up a package at Brookfield Orchards on my fall apple run. Talk about sweet melt-in-your-mouth goodness. One little piece feels like you’re inducing diabetes and or have just invited teeny-tiny little men into your mouth to swing at your teeth with teeny-tiny little pick axes.

Maybe not maple walnut ice cream. But maple syrup. Maple sugar candy.

Made in Vermont,

Then again, with a husband born in Bellows Falls, I’m awfully partial to all things Vermont made.