Vermont makes more maple syrup than any other state: about 3.1 million gallons in 2026, a little over half of the US crop. It has a lot of sugar maples, springs that make sap run, sugar makers who have nearly quadrupled the state's taps since 2003, and rules that hold its syrup to a higher standard than the federal one.
The numbers
The USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service puts Vermont's 2026 crop at about 3.1 million gallons. The whole country made about 5.9 million. So Vermont made more maple syrup than every other state put together. It wasn't a one-off, either: Vermont made about 3.1 million gallons in 2024 and about 3.0 million in 2025.
The next biggest producer, New York, made about 884,000 gallons. Maine was third at about 641,000. Vermont made more than three times as much as New York.
Vermont also had about 8.2 million taps in 2026, roughly half of the 16.5 million in the US. A tap is one spout in one tree, and a big maple can carry two or three. Vermont's taps also yielded a little more than average in 2026: about 0.38 gallons of syrup per tap, against 0.36 for the US.
Maple matters at home, too. Vermont's agriculture secretary calls it the state's second largest agricultural crop, behind milk. The cows have company.
A state full of maples
Start with the trees. About three quarters of Vermont is forest: roughly 4.5 million acres, or 76.2 percent of the state's land, according to the US Forest Service's 2017 inventory.
A lot of that forest is maple. Maple, beech and birch forests cover about 71 percent of Vermont's forest land. Measured by the volume of wood, sugar maple is the most common tree in the state. Some trees in Vermont sugarbushes are more than 200 years old.
That's the right maple to have. Sugar maple is the traditional tree for syrup, and its sap generally has more sugar than other maples, according to Cornell's maple program.
Vermont's Fish and Wildlife Department calls the northern hardwood forest the state's most abundant forest. Beech, yellow birch and sugar maple grow there together, on cool, moist, loamy soils below 2,700 feet. Sugar maples do well in cool, fertile soil.
Springs that make sap run
Sap runs when nights drop below freezing and days warm into the 40s, and Vermont's springs swing back and forth like that, usually starting in March. We cover how that swing gets sap moving, and where its sugar comes from, in when is maple syrup season in Vermont.
Fresh sap is clear and only slightly sweet, so you need a lot of it. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup.
Sugar makers who keep tapping
Trees and weather aren't the whole story. Vermont's sugar makers have grown the crop fast. The state had 2.12 million taps in 2003 and 8.4 million in 2024, nearly four times as many, according to the Vermont Agency of Agriculture. Production climbed from around 500,000 gallons to about 3.1 million over the same years. Since then, the number of taps has dipped a little, to about 8.2 million.
The gear changed, too. In the agency's words, buckets and horses have given way to tubes and reverse osmosis. Tubing carries sap from the trees to a tank. Reverse osmosis takes some of the water out of the sap before it's boiled.
The habit goes back a long way. The Vermont Maple Sugar Makers' Association traces the state's maple tradition to Indigenous peoples.
A higher standard
Vermont's rules call for syrup a touch thicker than the federal minimum, and only 100 percent pure maple syrup made entirely in the state can be labeled as a Vermont product. We explain both rules in what the word Vermont means on a maple syrup label.
Where Sticky comes in
Sticky's syrup comes from one Vermont forest. One ingredient, never blended.
It's boiled over a wood-burning fire. You can shop Amber and Dark, or read the maple guide to see how sap becomes the syrup in your tin.
