Deep Mountain Maple

The Special
This week we are pleased to feature blueberry, raspberry, hot pepper and ginger maple syrup from from Deep Mountain Maple of West Glover, Vermont. All this week, Chef Casey Graham will use locally-produced, wood-fired Deep Mountain Maple Syrup in main dishes, appetizers, salads, deserts, and drinks.

The Farm
Deep Mountain Maple are maple syrup producers in West Glover, Vermont, about 20 miles north of the Wildflower Inn in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. They produce pure Vermont maple syrup of many flavors as well as a variety of maple candies and sundries. Deep Mountain Maple sells their products almost exclusively at the Green Market in New York City and their syrups are featured in fine restaurants in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Their syrups can be found in Vermont at the Lake Parker Country Store in West Glover and now at the Wildflower Inn!


Deep Mountain Maple
Howie and Stephan Cantor have been producing maple syrup in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom for over 25 years. Though born out of state, Stephan in Georgia and Howie in New York City, they are at home in the Vermont woods. Their farm, Deep Mountain Maple, lies three miles outside of tiny West Glover village, about 20 miles south of the Canadian border.

Here is what the Cantors say about their work:

“They say there is no activity that ties a person to the whims of nature as much as sugaring, and therein lies the attraction and the addiction. Sap flows in maple trees when the winter first starts to thaw into spring. Cold nights and warm days are generally what is needed, but you can never predict exactly what the trees will do or when they will do it. At Deep Mountain we honor the traditional, inherent sustainability of maple sugaring. The production of maple syrup can be a beautifully complete agricultural circle, and maple trees, properly managed, can remain productive for one hundred years or more.

We are committed to maintaining their sugarbush and creating a product in ways that are pure and sustainable. Deep Mountain Maple Syrup is wood-fired. Large stands of sugar maples occur naturally in the forests of New England. These “sugarbushes” are interspersed with many other native species of trees and shrubs. Each year, in order to create optimal conditions in the forest ecosystem both for the growth of the sugar maples and for sap production, some trees must be cut down and removed from the forest in a process known as “thinning.” In any orchard, the growth of excess vegetation must be controlled; a maple agroecosystem is no different. But in this case, the wood that is cut from the sugarbush provides the necessary fuel for the process of boiling maple sap down into pure and delicious maple syrup. Supplemented with waste wood from a local sawmill, our own maple forest is our main source for locally abundant, renewable fuel. While many maple producers have embraced the use of oil-fired sugaring operations in order to eliminate the need to cut firewood and to make boiling easier and faster, we remain firmly committed to a responsible, sustainable cycle of maple syrup production.

A sugar maple tree must be 30 to 40 years old before it is big enough to tap. Once the tree has attained at least 12 inches in diameter, a small “spout” is inserted into a hole that has been drilled into the tree. This activity is called “tapping,” and each hole with its accompanying spout is a “tap.” Each tap is a small hole drilled into the tree. The sweet, clear sap flows from the taphole to tanks in the sugarhouse. Each tap is a small hole drilled into the tree. The sweet, clear sap flows from the taphole to tanks in the sugarhouse.

We manage our maple trees using a “one-tap” policy; that is, only a select few of our oldest and largest trees receive more than one tap in a given season. Done responsibly, tapping does not harm the trees at all. A tap hole naturally dries up after a few weeks of sap production, as the small puncture in the tree begins to heal. Also, because of new technologies that move sap from the trees to the sugarhouse more efficiently, today’s maple spouts are much smaller than in the past. They require a smaller hole in the tree, which heals even faster.

Deep Mountain maple syrup is made without pesticides, herbicides, or chemical fertilizers of any kind. Our maple trees are healthy due to constant, generous rain and snowfall throughout the year; deep, long winters that slowly lose their grip to the warm, bright sun of early spring; and, above all, the rich and rocky soil that sugar maples love; these characteristic elements of the rugged heart of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom combine to produce maple syrup that is absolutely unsurpassed in flavor and quality. We bottle their syrup on the farm, in our own canning facility.

In all that we do, we seek to manage the forest in a way that sustains it, and our future as sugarmakers.”

www.deepmountainmaple.com