The Sugar Season

A Year in the Life
Of Maple Syrup, and
One Family’s Quest for
The Sweetest Harvest

By Douglas Whynott


This book is a must read for any modern maple enthusiast or producer of ten to ten thousand taps. Although it is the story of Bascom Maple Farm and Bruce Bascom’s rise to a giant in the industry, its scope is far greater. It is also a chronicle of the 2012 maple season. Coincidently the 2012 season was much like 2023 season. 2012 was a record early start for most, then short and unseasonably warm. It was over by the 3rd week of March after a week in the 70s F, culminating in a record high in Concord, NH of 81 F on March 20th. The Canadians fared a little better with the weather, but the total crop was still well short of average. And the 2012 culminated with the infamous Great Syrup Heist.

Titan might be a better description than giant for Bruce Bascom. Throughout the book we are only given glimpses of the size and reach of the Bascom operation. Just the numbers bandied about in the book give pause. $250,000 trailers of barrels in, out, in and out. A warehouse in Quebec on one page then shipping 25 tons of sugar packets to Japan…a month… on another. More trailers of barrels in and out. The sales during his April 2012 open house weekend, $250,000. Then watch out, more trailers. The USDA says only 2 million gallons were produced in the poor 2012 season in the US. And Bascom had just completed a new refrigerated cooler to hold 750,000 gallons of barrels, which sparked his famous quip, “I got all of Maine in my basement.”

Bascom and his family lieutenants were quintessential innovators. Early to dump buckets for tubing. Early to recognize the power of thinning maple groves. Early to use reverse osmosis. Early to boil with steam. And perhaps his greatest achievement, back to the roots of the industry, conquering the high volume production of maple sugar. His sugar machines purportedly heat low grade or even damaged syrup under vacuum, resulting in a lower boiling point thus less caramelization, and still producing great maple sugar.

But it was sales manager Coombs that really allowed the petal to hit the metal. Sprinkled over the book, like fine magic sugar, is the Bascom creed of locking in the demand and then worrying about the supply and its inherent cost. Running with the big conglomerate dogs means chain store shelf space, international sales and bulk ingredient sales, all in vast volumes and inherent headaches. Unfathomable volumes if you’re chucking wood into a 2X6. Yet everything is just another drop in the bucket for Coombs’ ability. There is no question Bascom is an ace commodity trader, but it was not 100% pure maple syrup speculation, he had contracts to fulfill. And in a worse case, there was always tapping the famed Strategic Reserve on the other side of the border, being only a question of price and the interest costs of holding inventory, gut wrenching as it might be.

The added bonus to this book is Whynott’s chronicles of his travels in Mapleland. Dozens of memorable characters and antidotes from both sides of the border. From Bascom’s neighbor and forester, Peter Rhodes, selling thousands of gallons of sap while still raw boiling hundreds in his family’s rustic sugarhouse, to the producers and buyers on Maine’s remote Gold Road, whose only access is through Canada.

Of course, there is a downside to all stories. None of the children are interested in succession. Sugar House Road is remote; no natural gas line, no sewer line, high NH electrical costs, poor road infrastructure, limited labor pool, but it does have a great view, south and west, of Vermont. However, in perspective, that horizon is so close, almost claustrophobic, when the market balloons to worldwide. And this is a story of an ancient maple season now 10 years before high brix. Extrapolate and fast forward to today.