Maple syrup crop delivers quantity and quality

July 2, 2013, Longueuil, QC – This year's weather conditions have produced maple syrup that exceeded quantity and quality records.

The slight freezing at night and thawing
during the day, temperatures rarely exceeding 12 degrees, kept the
sap flowing throughout March and April (with the exception of Mar. 14-21) in all of Quebec's
maple-producing regions.

The 42.7 million taps operated by the 7,300 maple syrup producers in
Quebec have produced 120.3 million pounds of syrup, an all-time high,
with an average of 2.82 pounds per tap.

In 2009 the previous record was 109 million pounds and average production
per tap was 2.65 pounds. Yet 2013 provides not just quantity, but also
quality. The classification reports to date show the harvest to be of
very good quality, due in part to the absence of a heat
wave during sugaring season.

"What was special about this year? Perfect sugaring conditions that lasted a relatively long time for all of Quebec's regions. As of the second week of March, all Quebec regions were already in production, which is really uncommon, and all of them produced until at least the second-to-last week of April, which is even more uncommon," explains Serge Beaulieu, president of the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers. "As such, the maple producers in the far east of Quebec, specifically in Bas-Saint-Laurent, had yields as high as those of their fellow producers to the west, in Montérégie (2.96 lb./tap and 2.93 lb./tap respectively)."