Maple Syrup

A while ago I bought my first ever bottle of real maple syrup. It just ran out. So..... I went and bought another bottle. I am officially converted. Real maple syrup is awesome and the stuff I grew up on freaks me out. I can't believe I didn't realize that I was slurping down maple flavored high fructose corn syrup.

Real maple syrup, on the other hand, comes from trees. There are no other ingredients. Pretty cool. I bought 8 oz. for about 5.50. It came in a glass bottle. The same company sells 16 oz. in a cute plastic bottle for around 15.00. Now, I'm not a math genius (actually, I'm pretty good at math, but still...not a genius) but clearly the 8 oz. in glass is a better deal. Tricky evil marketers.

The syrup is grade A. I wondered what that meant, so I looked it up here. Apparently there are no differences in quality of syrup. It is graded accorded to the "robustness" of the maple flavor, as follows:
Grade A light amber: delicate maple flavor
Grade A medium amber: mild maple flavor
Grade A dark ": robust maple flav.
Grade B: strong robust maple flavor
Commercial: very strong maple flavor

Organic maple syrup costs a lot more. Since maple syrup is already pretty pricey for me, I wondered, "what is organic syrup?" Isn't all syrup organic? According to the people at tropical traditions, there IS a difference. There are 3 main points:
Organic maple forests are not sprayed with pesticides.
No formaldehyde is used in tree tapping.
The number of taps per tree is limited, ensuring the health of the forests.

It can take up to 40 years for a tree to get big enough to tap. I wonder if the forests have been organic that whole time....