Bigleaf Maple Syrup Makes a Splash in the Willamette Valley

For most people, the frozen weeks of winter are a time for bundling up inside with a bowl of soup and a cup of cocoa. The thought of going outside is so far off the radar, it doesn’t even register. During the winter ice storm of January 2023, most people around Newberg-Dundee were far more worried about pipes freezing than they were about anything else.

However, those freezing temperatures mean trees around the valley pull nutritious sap up from roots to help insulate and feed the tree during these adverse conditions. Sugarmakers—the title for people who harvest, boil, and bottle syrup from maple trees—around the Willamette Valley start their jaunt around Oregon Maple groves to collect that sap to turn into yet another prized crop: Bigleaf Maple Syrup.

Bigleaf Maple, also known as Oregon Maple and Acer macrophyllum, is a long-lived tree native to the Pacific Northwest with leaves roughly 6 – 12 inches across, according to the National Park Service. While its name suggests a smaller area, the Bigleaf Maple grows all along North America’s west coast from Alaska to California. While the wood is very useful (and valuable) for musical instruments, furniture, and other goods, what runs through the trees may prove to be even more valuable. 

“My dad was harvesting Bigleaf Maple Syrup in the 90s,” said Bigleaf sugarmaker Nolan Lynch. “It is such an early memory. When we moved out here and saw the maple tree grove, we figured we’d give it a shot.”

Lynch, a writer in the video game industry by trade, is a hobbyist in the growing West Coast sugarmaking world. His 150 taps span about one-eighth of a Champoeg maple grove where he lives, which he started tapping in 2021. Each tap consists of a metal spile driven into the tree, connected to blue surgical tubing that drains into a collection of buckets and jugs. 

Unlike the sticky pine sap you might get on your hands when carrying a Christmas tree, maple tree sap is much closer to lightly sweetened water with about one to two percent sugar content (Sugar Maple trees, for reference, have around two to five percent sugar content).

After driving around to collect from each bucket, Lynch brings the sap back to his shed where he filters sediment out and then begins the low-and-slow boiling method that evaporates water out of the sap, leaving behind the sweet syrup.

“It’s been a real learning experience,” Lynch said. “There is a lot of information from the sugar maple syrup makers out in the Northeast. But Bigleaf Maple is different — there is different weather out here and it has different needs. We’re kind of learning as we go.”

It’s a process Oregon State University (OSU) and other Pacific Northwest universities are hoping to standardize through shared information and research.

“This is a great economic opportunity for Oregonians to build an industry centered around the bigleaf maple, particularly in Western Oregon, where the tree is especially abundant,” said Eric Jones, the principal investigator for OSU’s Bigleaf Maple project and assistant professor of practice at the College of Forestry in an article posted via OSU’s College of Forestry blog.

The university is working with sugarmakers in the Willamette Valley and beyond to understand and develop best practices for sustainable harvesting, as well as providing the tools and resources for entrepreneurs like Dan Caldwell to start up their own operations.

In his second season, Caldwell and his company Bigfoot Food Products installed around 1,000 taps on 10 acres of Bigleaf Maples around his Sheridan, Ore., property, a rise from the 300 taps he had his first year. He said he hopes to double his production each year — not only with his own trees but his neighbors who have “thousands of acres of timberland.”

“The fun thing is: there isn’t a lot of gated information at this point,” Caldwell said. “I went to the International Maple Conference last year in Massachusetts and they’re not holding any secrets. It’s not like a lot of industries that have a lot of trade secrets. Everyone is very open.”

Caldwell is using that information and research from the universities to grow his operation, which he hopes will be a generational family business (he already has three generations working on Bigfoot Food Products with him). With experience in the food industry, Caldwell says there’s a lot of potential with Bigleaf Maple syrup in the future.

“Really, it’s very fun,” he said. “Having the family involved. But also, I get to spend a lot of time in the woods.”

Caldwell, Lynch, OSU, and other sugarmakers from around the region are betting on Bigleaf Maple’s future. While approaching the production of Vermont — which produces roughly half of the nation’s maple syrup according to the United States Department of Agriculture — is a lofty goal, the sugarmakers out West are looking to make an impression with the uniquely flavored syrup hinging largely on a term borrowed from the wine industry: terroir. 

The Source of Syrup Matters

The most common syrup sold in the United States doesn’t come from a tree at all, but rather is maple-flavored corn syrup or high fructose corn syrup (think Mrs. Butterworth’s or Log Cabin Brand).

Next, you’re likely to see New England-based maple syrup brands. These are generally lighter and more delicate in flavor, and also thinner in viscosity than the commercial brands. These are rated by color and flavor, from golden to amber to dark to very dark.

Bigleaf Maple syrup is tough to pin down, Caldwell says, because each maple grove has its own terroir, water sources, minerality, and conditions. But, he says, don’t go into it expecting traditional maple syrup. Bigleaf has far more complexity and subtlety — think coffee notes, some toffee, but also some minerality and earthiness.

“It’s almost more savory,” Lynch said. “Not that it isn’t sweet, it’s just not what people expect when they think maple syrup.”

Caldwell describes his Bigfoot Bigleaf Maple Syrup as having a “depth of flavor often compared to caramel, sweet molasses, or treacle.”

This year was a tough year for production. El Niño weather patterns made a warmer and drier than usual weather pattern over the Pacific Northwest according to the National Weather Service. With that warmer weather, maple trees didn’t require as much of the sweet sap, and therefore the sugarmakers weren’t able to harvest as much.

Lynch said he harvested nearly three times as much sap last year from fewer taps. With the few cold snaps in January and March, he was able to harvest around 20 gallons of sap. After evaporating, he expects about a half gallon of syrup.

“It’s all part of it, no matter how unfortunate,” Lynch said. “It’s very Oregonian in that way. ‘Let’s try this thing that we don’t know will work and see what happens. A bit of the pioneer spirit.”

You can follow Nolan Lynch’s Bigleaf Maple journey at his website, and you can try some Bigleaf Maple syrup for yourself from Bigfoot Food Products, which just released its 2024 batch.