Scaling Up the Use of Downgraded Maple Syrups for the Production of Wines and Spirits

Downgraded maple syrups represent a growing challenge for Quebec maple syrup producers, especially as the increasing number of taps on the market and climatic disturbances are likely to amplify flavor defects. Whether it has a flavor defect or not, maple syrup represents a rich source of sugar that could eventually represent a prime raw material for biotechnological processes such as alcoholic fermentation. As part of this project, the Distillerie CDSR du Granit will be scaling up to industrial scale processes for the valorization of downgraded maple syrups, developed in collaboration with a team from the Laboratoire des Technologies de la Biomasse (LTB) at the Université de Sherbrooke. The aim is initially to produce wine, but eventually spirits whose organoleptic properties will follow a standard despite the variability of the different downgraded syrups.