Single Origin: Meet the Producers
Goubau Farm
The Goubau family farms are in the Ottawa Valley region of Ontario, Canada. Maple syrup is produced in small batches using traditional bucket collection and longer boiling times over a wood-fired evaporator. The maple grove sits on a north-facing slopes in heavy clay soils which, along with taps consisting of 2/3 sugar maple and 1/3 red maple, gives the syrup a distinctive taste and deep amber colour.
Goubau Farm, Dark Robust Maple Syrup
£12.50
Warren and Trudy MacIntosh
Warren and Trudy MacIntosh operate Glengarry Stock Farms in Apple Hill, Eastern Ontario, which is also a dairy farm. Their sugar shack, "Ole Sugar Barn," has been producing maple syrup since the 1970s. It's a family affair, with parents and help from their four daughters overseeing over 1,700 trees each spring. The historic sugar camp is housed in a log cabin, with the potential to expand into an untapped 150 acres of maple forest.
Warren’s father, Bobby MacIntosh, was approached to start a 4-H club to teach maple syrup production to youngsters in the area. Together with his best friend Donat Decaire, Bobby built the original sugar building on Angel Road. Although the business waned over the years, as the farm’s next generation, Warren saw the opportunity to revitalize maple syrup production, building upon the dreams of both Warren’s father and Trudy’s mother, while diversifying their farming initiatives. Under the guidance of Ben Williams, a local woodworker with a passion for rejuvenating older buildings, a log barn belonging to the MacIntosh family was moved from one area of the farm and restored on the site of the original sugar camp, creating one of the most picturesque sugar cabins in the area. Even the cabin’s stone fireplace, built by retired local teacher and local stone mason Theo Otelaar, reflects the family’s community connections. Inspired by a suggestion from neighbor Richard Burton, the stones used in the focal centerpiece were donated from neighboring homes, with one special stone brought from Scotland years before by Trudy’s mom, Heather. The Ole Sugar Barn also features an ice cream shop during the summer—yet another creative diversification idea by a MacIntosh daughter.
Warren MacIntosh, Amber Rich Maple Syrup
£10.95
Louis & Joanne Brunet
Louis and Joanne Brunet are retired dairy farmers and longtime friends of Alain's family. They've pursued their passion for maple syrup by bringing a long-dormant maple sugar bush on their Eastern Ontario property back into production. Located right against the Québec border in St-Anne-de-Prescott, their 1,000 taps are all mature sugar maples growing in a rocky outcrop.
They bottle their lighter syrup and sell it locally under the name Aux Fruits de l’Érable. Their modern setup includes tubular sap collection, reverse osmosis for pre-concentration, and a wood-fired Dominion Grimm evaporator. The heart of their sugar season is their spacious sugar shack, where the evaporator, kitchen, and a large communal table blend together. Friends and family gather here to help with boiling and bottling, and to share meals—with plenty of maple syrup to sample! They produce syrup alongside their three daughters, in-laws and eight grandchildren.
Louis & Joanne Brunet, Amber Rich Maple Syrup
£7.95
Brian Wilson
Brian Wilson, an entertainment event producer by day and maple producer by night, truly embodies the name "Back Shed Maple Syrup" for his sugaring operation. Brian's sugar shack is a small building literally in his backyard that he built and equipped with a brand new wood-fired evaporator a few years ago. He learned the ropes of maple syrup production from a nearby farmer he helped to revive a sugar camp in a large sugar maple grove. Brian's sap collection is a community affair: neighbors along his street contribute sap from the odd tree in their yards or land plots, with the balance of his sap sourced from a couple of maple groves in his area. All sap is bucket collected and boiled directly without any pre-concentration using Brian’s small wood-fired evaporator.
This community-based approach to tapping approximately 200 maple trees results in a sap mix of sugar and silver maples, and even a few red maples. As different tree species produce varying quantities of sap with different sugar concentrations as Spring progresses, Brian’s batches of syrup throughout the season express this variability depending on which maples are flowing strongest. Any given batch has a unique profile that represents the sap flow characteristic of that week, resulting in a generally darker and flavorful syrup. A beer aficionado and experienced brewer, Brian works with a few brewing friends to craft maple-flavored beers from some of his production.
Brian Wilson, Amber Rich Maple Syrup
£12.95
John Filliol
John Filliol, a retired tradesman, along with his retired French teacher wife Louise, is a passionate maple syrup producer from Eastern Ontario. He's a strong believer in the traditional table syrup his generation grew up with.
John's sugar shack is a very cozy setup, blending an old farm building he personally moved to create a communal dining room (and a warm spot to relax and chat after hard outdoor work, especially after a cold afternoon of tapping trees on a windy late winter day, just before the sap starts running!). It also features a syrup finishing and bottling area, and an evaporator room.
His evaporator is a mix of an older firebox and newer boiling pans. He uses a blend of softwood and pine collected from the woods on his property during the summer months. Because his firebox is relatively small and requires regular wood upkeep, some of the smoke that escapes during wood additions comes into contact with the boiling sap, resulting in a subtle hint of smoke. This, combined with a relatively high level of variance in the boil intensity, results in a generally darker but very flavorful syrup profile.
John taps about 200 exclusively sugar maples with the help of friends who volunteer their time throughout the season in exchange for a hearty meal and an allocation of his dark and flavorful syrup. The sugar maples come from a mix of woodlots he owns and from neighboring properties happy to allow their maples to be tapped in exchange for some syrup. John’s syrup is collected in traditional buckets and boiled without any pre-concentration. It's almost as if the spirit of old friends working together and sharing stories over a meal (or a strong coffee…) is part of what makes his syrup so good. Canadians who taste John’s syrup often remark that it reminds them of the syrup they distinctly remember enjoying growing up but can never find in stores—a 500 ml bottle often disappears over the course of a weekend among family or friends!
John Filliol, Dark Robust Maple Syrup
£12.95
Luc & Eric Bellefroid
Luc and Patrick Bellefroid produce maple syrup in the Dundee area of Québec, an interesting corner of Southwestern Québec with a history tied to the Scottish settlers who first cleared and farmed these lands. Luc is retired dairy farmer who, along with his son Patrick, now primarily focuses on growing corn and soybean crops on the sandy loams common to this area, Luc and Eric also produce a large amount of syrup from over 4,200 taps of exclusively silver maples spread across two large sugar bushes.
The sugaring season marks the start of their agricultural year, filling the time between the end of winter and the busy crop sowing season that begins in late April. Given their relatively larger operation, the sugar season is a short and intense period for the Bellefroids. As their trees are generally exposed to the minerals and moisture of low-lying plains, compared to the typical hard rock sugar maples associated with Québec syrup, their maple syrup generally stays within amber and darker grades.
With a large amount of sap collected over a tubular system, reverse osmosis concentration, and a large, quietly humming wood-fired evaporator, entering their sugar shack feels like walking into a finely-tuned Swiss clock, with Eric constantly monitoring every aspect of the system.
Because of the mineral content from their silver maples and soil profile, and their limited local market for bottled syrup, the syrup the Bellefroids produce is typically sold in bulk to other bottlers and processors. However, using early-season sap and combined with their finely tuned evaporation system, Luc will select and then bottle a few batches of lighter and subtler tasting syrup. This results in a syrup that is generally well balanced with a clear and consistent maple taste and aroma profile.
Luc Bellefroid, Amber Rich Maple Syrup
£7.95
Sebastien Forget
By day, Sebastien Forget is a fintech software product manager; by spring, he's a maple producer. Seb produces a small amount of maple syrup on his family’s old farm property near Embrun, Ontario. In his grandfather’s time, the family maintained a small sugar maple grove on the lower land to meet their own sugar needs. Over two generations, the sugar bush was cleared, turned into a hay field, and eventually allowed to regrow into a grove now almost exclusively of silver maples. A few years ago, Seb decided to rebuild the family’s sugar shack. Over several weekends, with the help of local friends and family, Seb installed a cozy two-section sugar shack: an evaporator room and a front sitting room, which he's gradually transforming into a home office and a comfortable space to relax with friends and family as the evaporator runs in the background.
Seb's syrup is largely made from young silver maples. The water-saturated, heavy clay soils in which they grow impart a different mineral profile than typical hardwood maple syrup found on rocky outcrops. He also uses traditional bucket sap collection, often collected with his immediate family and their children. Most of his boiling is done during extended weekends over a brand new, small wood-fired Waterloo evaporator. Because silver maples tend to have lower sugar concentrations and Seb doesn't pre-concentrate his sap, boiling times with wood firing are longer, resulting in a syrup that slowly caramelizes into its unique flavor profile.
Sebastien Forget, Amber Rich Maple Syrup
£12.95