Different grades of Pure Vermont Maple Syrup The very best Maple syrup in the world comes from a mountainous state in the USA called Vermont, just below the Canadian border. The North American Indians were the first to discover 'sinzibuckwud', the Algonquin (a North American Indian tribe) word for maple syrup, meaning literally 'drawn from wood". The Indians would use their tomahawks to make V shaped incisions in the trees, then insert reeds or concave pieces of bark to run the sap into buckets made from birch bark. Because no proper equipment was available, the sap was then slightly concentrated by throwing hot stones into the bucket, or by leaving it overnight and tossing the layer of ice out which had formed on the top. The Indians drank it as a sweet drink and used it in cooking. The first white settlers and fur traders introduced wooden buckets to the process, as well as iron and copper kettles. Later they would bore holes in the trees and hang their buckets on home-made spouts. Maple Sugar production was especially important because the other types of sugar were hard to find and expensive. It was as common on the table as salt is today. In fact, during the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin had plans to have his future country self-sufficient on sugar by using maple sugar. Vermont has an ideal climate for growing sugar Maple trees. The Spring season in Vermont brings cold nights and sunny days. The freezing temperatures during the nights holds the sap in and then the warmth from the Sun during the day lets the Maple sap drip from the tap into a bucket or tubing. This sweet sap is then taken to the sugarhouse and boiled down into thick and delicious pure Maple syrup. It takes approximately forty gallons of sap to boil down to one gallon of pure Maple syrup. It also requires a lot of hard work. Making syrup also requires intense heat and a lot of wood. In order to provide enough heat to make just one gallon of syrup it takes a piece of wood as large as a man. A typical Vermont sugarhouse Tapping a Maple tree in the forest. It takes forty years to grow a Maple tree large enough to tap. A tree ten inches in diameter is considered the minimum tappable size for one tap. For each additional six inches in diameter, another bucket (tap) may be added. It takes four or five taps to produce enough Maple sap (forty gallons) to produce one gallon of syrup. The normal maple season lasts four to six weeks, sometimes starting as early as February in southern Vermont and lasting into late April in northern Vermont.Vermont is the largest producer of Maple syrup in the United States, producing about one third of all the syrup produced in the USA. Every county in Vermont produces some maple syrup. It is estimated there are around two thousand Maple producers spread throughout the state. Vermont Maple syrup is also made into Maple sugar, Maple cream and Maple candies. These products are made by evaporating more water from the Maple syrup and controlling the crystallization process during cooling. Along with Maple syrup, these products are shipped all over the world. Some unique, and quite old, Maple syrup containers from Vermont Collecting Maple sap in Vermont and hauling it back to the sugarhouse by horse-drawn sleigh. Vermont's law, unlike other parts of the USA, requires syrup to be free from any preservatives or other additives. You cannot mistake real Vermont syrup. It´s flavour is unmatched.