“In order for a product to become popular on a regular basis in this country and around the world, it needs to hit a certain price point,” Hope says. Allison Hope, executive director of the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association, believes bigleaf maple might have the same fate. While a Canadian report found that opportunities to create successful birch syrup enterprises that would generate modest profits and operations such as Alaska Wild Harvest and Forbes Wild Foods have developed followings, the products remain a niche part of the market. Sugarmakers (and researchers) have long explored the potential to collect sap and make syrup from other hardwood trees, including birch and black walnut. īigleaf maple syrup might be a niche product, but it’s not the first attempt at diversification in the maple industry. Vermont produced more than two million gallons of the sweet stuff last season New York sugarmakers produced 820,000 gallons and Maine produced 580,000 gallons, according to the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service. Neil’s Bigleaf is the largest commercial producer of maple syrup on the west coast, but other sugarmakers, including West Coast Wild Foods and Kleekhoot Gold, both based in British Columbia, struggle to keep their bigleaf maple syrup in stock.ĭespite the interest in bigleaf maple syrup, production is just a drop in the sap bucket compared to major maple-producing regions.
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The family plans to install 10,000 new taps in advance of the 2021 season.ĭay credits a hunger for local foods for turning the niche product into a hot commodity. Last year, Neil’s Bigleaf Maple Syrup produced 140 gallons of syrup Day, who stepped in to help his stepdad with sales and marketing, estimates that this season will yield up to 700 gallons. In the Pacific Northwest, the sugaring season for bigleaf maples runs from October to March, a much longer period than sugar maple operations observe in other parts of the country. In 2017, McLeod transitioned his hobby into a commercial venture, increasing the number of taps and investing in reverse osmosis equipment and a commercial evaporator to increase production, and the operation continues to grow. He gave the syrup as gifts and shared it with local chefs and received sweet feedback about his backyard harvest.
McLeod started tapping the bigleaf maple trees and boiling the sap into syrup over a bonfire. “There is an industry coming,” says Devin Day, who taps trees with his stepdad, Neil McLeod. In Vermont, the largest maple syrup-producing state in the nation, sugarmakers tapped six million trees in 2019 on the farm in Washington State, just 3,200 trees are tapped-but that has not stopped the family-owned venture from dreaming about turning the Pacific Northwest into a respected maple syrup region. The size of the operation is different, too. The farm is located in Acme, Washington, thousands of miles from the epicenter of US maple syrup production, and the trees are bigleaf maples, not the iconic sugar maples. But a closer look reveals some big differences. At first glance, the farm where Neil’s Bigleaf Maple Syrup is produced might look like countless other sugarbushes where maple trees are tapped, sap is collected and boiled down into maple syrup.
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