Robb Turner - The Crown Maple Guide to Maple Syrup: How to Tap and Cook with Natures Original Sweetener

INTRODUCTION

I ts an odd way to start a cookbook, I know. But I have to say it: I never set out to be a maple syrup producer. Its not something a private equity executive would think to do, especially one who spent the majority of his career investing in power and energy infrastructure. But little did I know that maple syrupone of the most revered natural food products available todaywould challenge me to think like an energy innovator, to be resourceful with science and respectful of a tradition that not only predates me, but predates almost every kind of food technology. To me, maple syrup isnt just a food; its a natural resourcean edible bounty created in a self-sustaining environment, alone in a world of easily depleted resources, where vast swaths of forest have been bulldozed to make way for industrial spaces. But buildings dont produce food; plants do. In that sense, maple syrup is the most American of products, a food sourced straight from nature that demands we use our modern technology to properly unlock it from the untamed wilderness. Its a seemingly simple yet profoundly sophisticated delicacy, and I fell in love with this hobby and the challenge it presented: to apply my modern sense of business, science, and technology to the oldest and most beautiful of American foods.

I wish I could say I saw the possibilities of maple syrup from the very start, that I purchased huge tracts of land in eastern Dutchess County, New York simply to build my own sugar shack. But that could hardly be further from the truth. In fact, I bought the first patch of land for pure pleasure, a weekend country retreat for my wife, Lydia, and our growing daughters, Madeline and Ava.