If you were to celebrate maple syrup Pride, the colours of its rainbow would be Golden, Amber, Dark, and Very Dark. That’s according to the PPAQ web site and, since it manages more than 70% of the global maple syrup supply, that’s pretty much the end of the discussion. However, outside Québec, people tend to stick to three colours, not bothering to distinguish between Dark and Very Dark.
Along with the different colours are different flavour profiles. Turning again to the official web site, the PPAQ identifies the flavours as Delicate, Rich, Robust, and Strong. Or, since this is Québec, Délicat, Riche, Robuste, et Prononcé.
At Williams Farm, John Williams finds that a lot of veteran maple syrup customers prefer Dark. Unfortunately for John, he doesn’t have much control over colour profile. When the sap begins to run, the early boils produce syrup with a light colour profile (Golden). As things progress, the boils produce Amber … and many years that’s as far as it goes. For reasons related mostly to weather, the trees stop producing sap and get on with the business of producing buds and leaves. But sometimes if John’s lucky, the sap runs late and the last boils produce dark syrup and everyone goes mental over it.
Personally, I find that while the colour gradations are significant, the corresponding flavour profiles are exaggerated. If I were writing a crime piece, I would call them the alleged flavour profiles because, as they say in court, the jury is still out. In fact, there is a good body of evidence to suggest that the visual appearance of a food strongly influences our perception of flavour. This stands to reason given that nearly 50% of our cerebral cortex is devoted to processing visual information whereas only 1-2% is allocated to taste.
I’m inclined to think we describe the flavour of Golden syrup as delicate because it looks delicate while we describe the flavour of Dark syrup as robust because it looks robust. But actual differences in flavour are far less significant than we suppose. the fact is: both syrups have an extraordinarily high sugar content and sweetness dominates everything.
Naturally, I reserve the right to contradict myself in future posts.
