A single-barrel run is boiled, filtered and drawn from one tank on one day, so nothing is pooled across the season. You taste the ridge, the weather and the sugar of that exact week — a vintage, not a sweetener.

Grades describe how much light passes through the syrup, not how good it is. Early runs pour pale and delicate; late runs pour dark and mineral. We print the reading for each barrel on the neck tag so you can pick by flavour rather than by guesswork.

Sap and heat. Nothing is added, nothing is cut, and no defoaming agent touches the pan — we skim by hand instead. One jug takes roughly 41 litres of raw sap from the stand named on the label.

Our lines run through a north-facing hardwood slope we lease on a 30-year agreement, about two hours from the coast. The sugarhouse sits at the bottom of the same ridge so sap reaches the pan the day it is drawn.

A trunk has to measure at least 28 centimetres across before it carries a single spile, and it never carries more than two. Anything showing crown die-back is rested for a full season and re-measured the following autumn.

Every barrel keeps its own number from the moment it leaves the evaporator, and that number stays on the jug. Type it into the tracker and you will see the draw date, the boil length and the sugar reading at the pan.

Never. A barrel that does not fill an order is held back and sold as a short lot rather than topped up with the following year. It is the reason a few lots sell out in a fortnight and never return.

Each collection line feeds a dedicated tank, and the tank is logged against a stand code before the boil starts. The code is stamped into the foil seal, so a bottle can be walked back to about forty trees.

Yes — once the seal is broken, keep it cold and use it within about six months. Unopened jugs are happy in a dark cupboard for two years, and the freezer will hold a decanted bottle almost indefinitely.

Cold storage pushes fine mineral sediment out of suspension, which reads as a haze or a gritty layer at the base. Stand the jug in warm water for ten minutes and it clears; the syrup itself is untouched.

Boiled sap carries no pollen and no live cultures, so the usual infant caution around raw sweeteners does not apply here. Anyone managing a tree-nut sensitivity should still read the shared-line note on the label.

A 60 ml pour carries about 53 grams of naturally occurring sugar, plus manganese, zinc and a trace of calcium. The full panel for the barrel you bought sits on the tracker page beside its draw date.