WASHINGTON — It’s peak sugaring season in much of the Northeast, when the country’s maple syrup producers tap their trees to collect the sap that flows freely this time of year. It takes about 40 gallons of maple sap – and nothing else – to make one gallon of real maple syrup. By contrast, the artificial stuff – think Aunt Jemima and Mrs. Butterworth’s – is mostly corn syrup.

Fake maple syrup resembles real maple syrup about as much as Velveeta resembles a good Camembert. But when I asked 1,000 Americans which they preferred on their pancakes, the artificial brands won out big time. Just over 25 percent of respondents to a Google Consumer Survey panel said that real maple syrup was their top choice. Seventy percent chose either Aunt Jemima, Mrs. Butterworth’s, Log Cabin or Hungry Jack. Another 3 percent chose something else.

Looming behind this preference, of course, is the specter of price. A gallon of Mrs. Butterworth’s will set you back just under 8 bucks at Wal-Mart. A gallon of the real stuff, on the other hand, retails for $40 to $60 – owing to the labor-intensive process of collecting and reducing all that sap.

And this process happens on a commercial scale only in the Northeast. Vermont is the nation’s undisputed king, accounting for more than 40 percent of the total U.S. output of over 3 million gallons in 2014. Seven of the top 10 maple-producing counties are in Vermont. There’s a surprisingly robust maple syrup industry in Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan, too. (Our annual supply is just a fraction of the 12 million gallons churned out in Canada, mostly in Quebec.)

U.S. maple syrup output has risen by more than 50 percent since about 2008. In 2013, the national maple industry’s output was worth about $132 million.

Some producers are growing creative in their search for more revenue. The latest innovation is a push to sell “maple water” – the raw sap, straight from the tree. Producers are marketing it as a competitor to coconut water.

Here’s why: Say you have 40 gallons of maple sap on hand. You can boil that down to syrup and sell it at retail for about $40. Or, you could package it in 16-ounce cartons and sell them for $3 each – or a yield of $960 in revenue for 40 gallons.


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