Our property has 4,500 taps in the peaks of the Appalachian Mountains, in the town of St-Julien. Our sugar shack was built in 1989 and the property was developed for harvesting by Lise and Gérald, on the land that previously belonged to Grandpa Simoneau.
In the old days, Gérald had to boil the sap on a wood stove for hours, sometimes all night long, to get maple syrup.
Since 2018, their children Nathalie, Mylène and Joé took over harvesting on the property. The wood stove remained and the process evolved while maintaining as many traditional methods as possible to produce unique syrup, day in and day out.
Each spring, the whole family gets together to harvest nature’s bounty, and now the grandchildren participate too. We’re harvesting our syrup as sustainably as we can, so future generations can continue the tradition.
In 2014, the adventure began when Nathalie Simoneau, daughter of maple producers and a pastry chef with over 10 years of experience in major hotels and restaurants like Sofitel and Laurie Raphaël, launched the family property’s first maple syrup collection.
I sold maple syrup to my friends and they told me it was the best they’d ever tasted. So I decided to sell it!
Selling maple syrup wasn’t new; her mother, Lise, produced and sold maple products in different markets for years, while her father, Gérald, took care of the harvest. Nathalie and her sister, Mylène, worked with her nearly every weekend in the spring.
Nathalie’s love of baking grew out of a fondness for her mother’s desserts, which Lise prepared for every meal using maple syrup from the farm and wild fruit picked from the property: apples, strawberries, raspberries and blueberries.
She has developed a collection of pure maple products and sweet pastries made with maple sugar only.
In 2019, she opened a workshop-boutique in Montreal that combines her two loves: the land and pastry-making.
I’m passionate about agriculture. It’s what feeds us. At the maple farm and behind the stoves, I’m preserving and promoting tradition while trying to reduce our ecological footprint as much as possible.
Our mountain property, wood boiler and love for agriculture is what makes our maple syrup so unique. Because our syrup is bottled every day and never blended, you can discover all the different flavours of maple syrup that nature has to offer, from the beginning to the end of the harvest.
Golden syrup is produced at the beginning of the spring. Because it’s still cold out, the sap is completely clear. This gives golden syrup a light colour and delicate flavour, slightly sweet with hints of marshmallow and vanilla.
Amber syrup is produced in the middle of the spring It’s getting warmer, the snow is melting and the ground is slowly thawing. The sap is starting to change, giving amber syrup a darker colour than the golden syrup, and a richer caramel flavour.
Chemin des 15 lots got its name many years ago from an agreement between the Saint-Julien and Saint-Jean-Baptiste-Vianney (now known as Vianney) parishes. The Saint-Julien parishioners who lived on these 15 plots of land had to take the road to go to church in the neighbouring town. The nickname stuck and we named our maple farm after it.
