It may be organic, but it isn't maple syrup
EAST MONTPELIER, Vt. -- Elliott Morse, a seventh-generation maple syrup maker, is standing in his gift shop in the middle of his sugarbush here. Squeeze bottles of various grades of 100 percent pure Vermont maple syrup are lined up on a table behind him for customers at Morse Farm Maple Sugarworks to taste and compare.
Amid old-fashioned tins and traditional glass bottles filled with his own syrup, Morse examines a big plastic bottle of Shady Maple Farms Certified Organic Pancake Syrup that a reporter has handed him. "They call it organic?" Morse asks indignantly. "Well, all maple syrup is organic. Our trees are organic."
His reaction may be common sense, but it's not the law. Two-year-old USDA regulations spell out what can be labeled organic, and by design, several new products on the market qualify. This month, as Morse and other maple syrup producers across New England collect sap from sugar maples and tend to evaporation pans, two companies are hoping to tap into the market with certified organic "pancake syrups."
The products are made from bona fide ingredients that add up to something you might pour over pancakes. They're somewhat higher in real maple syrup than standard-issue supermarket syrup, and they're priced lower than Vermont's pure nectar. Sorrell Ridge Organic Syrup (the label reads "100% Real MAPLE flavor") and Shady Maple Farms Certified Organic Pancake Syrup ("A Natural Choice") are made from all organic ingredients and, as such, are available in natural foods markets across the country. The companies making them hope to profit from consumers' growing appetite for anything organic.
Neither purports to be maple syrup: By law, only 100 percent pure maple syrup may be labeled as such. Everything else is "pancake syrup," though whether most consumers know the difference is an open question. Fashioned by food technologists, the new organic syrups tout corn syrups and cane sugars (both organic) on their ingredient lists.
Shady Maple's version contains 4 percent real maple syrup, according to the company's director of export sales, Marlene Jolicoeur. Ironically, the Canadian company is primarily a distributor of pure maple syrup. Sorrell Ridge syrup, which went on the market 10 months ago, contains "natural maple flavor," but no maple syrup is listed as an ingredient. Fred Ross, CEO of Sorrel Ridge's parent company, Allied English, says that the company is reworking the product and the "new and improved" syrup will contain 10 percent organic maple syrup, high by industry standards. A display at Morse Farm Maple Sugarworks gives the percentages of maple syrup in several leading brands of (nonorganic) pancake syrup: Mrs. Butterworth has none; Vermont Maid contains 2 percent.
Big sellers like Aunt Jemima, of course, wouldn't know a maple tree if one fell on them. To go with your flapjacks, Aunt Jemima Original serves up helpings of hard-to-pronounce ingredients such as sodium hexametaphosphate and sodium benzoate, along with cellulose gum, salt, sorbic acid, caramel color, and artificial flavor. (This is billed as "warmth, nourishment and trust" on the company's website.)
But if they look good next to ordinary table syrups, the new organic pancake syrups still fall far from the sugar maple tree. And why, wonders Vermont maple syrup maker David Marvin, "would you seek organic ingredients, even if they are beautifully sourced, just to replicate what nature gives us?
"I can think of very few things that are more inherently organic than maple syrup," Marvin says. "It's produced from a wild plant in what is basically a wild forest setting. It epitomizes sustainability."
Stately trees and bucolic settings aside, without USDA certification maple syrup still cannot be called organic, a technicality that's led to another new product, organic maple syrup. In recent years, plenty of Vermont sugar makers have sought organic certification for their 100 percent pure syrup. So while two bottles of maple syrup on the grocery shelf may be virtually identical, one might be stamped organic and will likely cost more. Sugar makers say that the certification is more of a marketing device than anything else. It reassures consumers that the product is pure, and it increases the chances of reaching those consumers who seek out organic labeling as a matter of course. Certification hasn't, they say, changed their product in any significant way.
"Even though we feel maple is just about as organic as you can possibly get," said Vermont's supervisor of consumer assurance, Henry Marckres, "the certification is what is making a difference in some markets now."
For centuries, maple syrup "was considered a poor man's substitute for cane sugar," says Marvin, who has been tapping his own trees at Butternut Mountain Farm in Morrisville, Vt., for 45 years. "It was less expensive than cane. It was what you ate every day. Cane sugar, the nice white stuff, was for special occasions." In the 1880s, a new method for producing cane sugar changed the balance of that equation. Ever since, maple syrup has been the costlier product. As early as 1887, P. J. Towle of Minnesota began selling a less expensive blend of maple and sugarcane syrup. He called it Log Cabin.
In the ensuing 100 years, inexpensive imitation syrups captured most of the market and, some would argue, the American palate.
At Sorrell Ridge, Ross says, his syrup is priced to sell. A 12-ounce bottle is about $3. The 24-ounce bottle of Shady Maple Farms Pancake Syrup costs $6.99. Real maple syrup can cost double that price.
Maple syrup producers are confident they can hold their own against organic pancake syrups, but they still hope shoppers look beyond the replica bottles and old-fashioned maple motifs.
"I think any of that stuff is treading in our territory," says Burr Morse, brother and partner of Elliott at Morse Farm Maple Sugarworks.
"If you are thinking," he says, "if your eyes are open, you are not going to fall for it. But there are people whose eyes aren't open."
