Syrupy

When sweetness tastes a little bitter, something is off. The sweet world of maple syrup — Canada's sticky national emblem, no less — is fighting over its capital.

Not Ottawa — that’s where governing happens, which has considerably less sticky consequences. Two cities are claiming the same title at the same time, and neither is thinking of backing down.

In 1993, the city of Plessisville in Québec trademarked the title *Capitale mondiale de l’érable* — the Maple Syrup Capital of the World, in plain English. That’s the paper truth. Another city in the same country has ignored the registered right and claimed the title “Maple Syrup Capital” for itself. The city is called Mirabel — which puts curious palates in mind of mirabelle plums, but that’s a different syrup story. Reading this peculiar little item, something rang a bell. There was something — a similar story, only with cheese, and in Switzerland.

Ah yes, the dispute over the genuine alpine cheese with the evocative name *Sonnenhalde*. The long-established cheesemaker takes time to let the cheese ripen, has held the recipe for generations, and with it the licence to produce. In the same region, other producers have introduced more modern methods with shorter production times. The dispute turns on the term *Sonnenhalder Käse*, which customers associate with the quality of age and flavour. Whether the faster method yields the same depth of flavour — that is the real question nobody asks out loud. In the end, it comes down to an old question: what may call itself tradition when time moves faster than the ripening? The dispute matures on — like the cheese. And both are taking their time.

Back to the maple syrup, and the sticky dispute between Plessisville and Mirabel. Here too, one city — Plessisville — stands for the long tradition of maple syrup production. Every year the city hosts a maple syrup festival and draws thousands of visitors to the region. Mirabel, meanwhile, applies more modern methods to coax the sticky sap from the maple trees and sweeten the Canadian breakfast.

So what is really behind the squabble of the stickies?

It’s only incidentally about the sign at the city limits. Behind it stand tourist flows, festival budgets, licensing fees — the sticky stuff of which economic interests are made.

The dispute is not yet settled. Not with the cheese in Switzerland, nor with the maple syrup in Canada. But both sides have achieved one thing, unintentionally: people are talking about them. About the cheese. About the syrup.
Sometimes the loudest advertisement is a quarrel

.