The Good Food Awards are given by the Good Food Foundation to recognize outstanding food produced by socially responsible businesses. "The Good Food Foundation exists to celebrate, connect, empower and leverage the passionate and engaged, yet often overlooked, players in the food system who are driving towards tasty, authentic and responsible food in order to humanize and reform our American food culture." - Good Food Foundation. These coveted awards recognize the best of socially responsible, specialty food.
After being awarded a Good Food Award in January of 2020, our Coffee Infused Maple Cream also won a Bronze Sofi Award. Every year, thousands of products are entered into the Sofi Awards, and only a select few are honored with an award. These coveted awards recognize the best food in world and we are thrilled to be awarded this international recognition.
The Good Food Awards are given by the Good Food Foundation to recognize outstanding food produced by socially responsible businesses. "The Good Food Foundation exists to celebrate, connect, empower and leverage the passionate and engaged, yet often overlooked, players in the food system who are driving towards tasty, authentic and responsible food in order to humanize and reform our American food culture." - Good Food Foundation. These coveted awards recognize the best of socially responsible, specialty food.
Our Swing Top bottle of Organic Pure Vermont Maple Syrup was featured on Oprah's Favorite Thing's List 2017. It was a surreal experience, and after the holiday season we thought that there was no way we would ever be able to top that! Well, we didn't top it, but here we are again for the second year in a row with one of our products being featured on Oprah's Favorite Things List! In 2018 it was our Organic Coffee Infused Vermont Maple Syrup, packaged in a wooden crate. Essentially, we have brewed organic fair trade coffee in Vermont maple syrup. Some people like a little sweet in their coffee, we like a little coffee in our sweet! It's such an honor for us to be featured on this prestigious list, two years in a row!
Created by the Specialty Food Association, the Sofi Awards are commonly referred to as the Oscars of the food industry. The SFA, founded in 1952, is a membership-based trade association with over 3,500 members. Every year thousands of products are entered for a chance to win a coveted Sofi award, and our Single Malt Barrel Aged Vermont Maple Syrup took first place in the Dessert Sauce or Topping, Syrup category. We are so proud of our team and this accomplishment!
We've put a ton of effort into crafting the worlds finest pure Vermont maple candy. It's soft and creamy on the inside and melts in your mouth. We produce this the old fashioned way in small batches without the use of candy machines. While our exact process is a bit of a secret, the quality of our candy is not. This is our second national recognition by the Sofi Awards for this product, after a 2018 Silver Sofi last year.
While we were in New York City at the Summer Fancy Food Show, we met with representatives of O, The Oprah Magazine to chat about our maple candy being picked for the November 2017 O-List. While we were chatting our beautiful Old-Fashioned Swing Top bottle of Organic Pure Vermont Maple Syrup caught their eye. We were asked if it could be nested in a wooden box, and if we would like to send a sample in for consideration of the Favorite Things List. We went to work, designing a branded wooden box fit for such a bottle and once again, shipped it off to NYC to the magazine. You can imagine our excitement when we got that follow-up email...
After we received our Silver Sofi for our Organic Pure Vermont Maple Candy, we were approached by O, The Oprah Magazine. They were extremely interested in our maple candy, and asked if we could send them a box for taste testing. We already believed our maple candy was the best in the world, but were we ready for this? We shipped a few boxes out to "O" and waited for the verdict. You can find our O-Picked maple candy on page 58 of O, The Oprah Magazine in the November 2017 issue.
Created by the Specialty Food Association, the Sofi Awards are commonly referred to as the Oscars of the food industry. The SFA, founded in 1952, is a membership-based trade association with over 3,500 members. Every year thousands of products are entered for a chance to win a coveted Sofi award, and our Organic Pure Vermont Maple Candy took second place in the Non-Chocolate Confections category. This national recognition has propelled our brand into the spotlight and we are so proud to see our maple candy on the podium!
Our secret maple candy recipe took over a year and 1,000 pounds to perfect, and as soon as we got it right we decided to see how it would stack up against other accomplished candy makers. We took Best-In-Show at the Sugarhouse of Champlain Valley Fair, Vermont's largest exposition!
We knew we were onto something...
On November 7th, 2018 Oprah revealed her Oprah's Favorite Things 2018 List and we are so excited (and proud) to once again be featured on this prestigious list!. Once again, Liz Strzepa visited our production shop in Winooski, VT to see what all the buzz was about. This year it was our Coffee Infused Vermont Maple Syrup that made the list, and Liz filmed us at every stage of production.
Right after our OFT bottle of maple syrup was featured on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Vermont Digger reached out to do a piece on us. Not only were we chosen as one of three items for Stephen Colbert to talk about, another Vermont company, Farmhouse Pottery, also had the honors! This is a great little article talking about two great Vermont companies in the limelight this holiday season
In early November a powerful storm surged across Northern Vermont causing wide-spread wind damage across the region. Many locations lost power for over a week as road and power crews scrambled to clean up the damage. Maple sugar makers were hit particularly hard, as the winds pulled down maple trees, pines and poplars causing huge damage to tubing systems and maple forests. Trees are used to winds coming from the north and west so this storm out of the east was far more damaging than most. Our sugar bush was particularly hard-hit and WCAX decided to do a story and visited our farm to document the damage. It takes many months to clean-up after a storm like this, and we will certainly be impacted for years to come as the forests recover.
As part of the promotion of Oprah's Favorite Things 2017, Gayle King was hosted by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Out of all the items on Oprah's Favorite Things 2017, our Old Fashioned Swing Top Bottle of Organic Pure Vermont Maple Syrup was one of only three items chosen for the segment! Yeah, that's right.... Stephen Colbert!!!
On November 2nd, 2017 Oprah revealed her Favorite Things 2017, and not too long after one of our local news channels was calling. Liz Strzepa visited our production shop in Winooski, VT where we were busily preparing for the holiday season, as well as Oprah's Favorite Things! She caught us at a good time where we were labeling the bottles anddipping them in wax along with producing our pure Vermont Maple Candy, which was also featured by Oprah in the November issue of O, The Oprah Magazine.
During the summer of 2016, ABC Good Morning America MeteorologistGinger Zee traveled the country producing a series called Food Forecast. She was reporting on the impact of weather on different food industries. She and her film-crew came to Vermont and visited Mount Mansfield Maple, Morse Sugarworks and Proctor Maple Research Center to gather footage and information for the series. It's a cool piece, check it out!