I’ll taste test with ya anytime! Orange County has way better soil than Washington county, you can taste it in the water, forage quality is superior when we do forage analysis, it makes sense to me that the mineral composition in the syrup from Orange County would also lead to a better flavor. I’m a farmer, originally from Orange County but live in Washington county now. My forage and soil quality on my Washington county fields vs my Orange County fields are shockingly different, and to get my Washington county fields to the level of my Orange County fields requires a lot of constant amendments, where as I haven’t put anything on some of my Orange County fields in close to a decade (I mostly pasture those fields now as trucking hay home from there doesn’t make sense, if I was haying them I would obviously be adding amendments)

I will also say you’ll notice flavor differences with different rigs. Personally I don’t like the flavor or steam syrup. I think when you push sap through an RO you change the flavor some, going to around 10% doesn’t change much, but pushing it to 18% I think you’re losing flavor. Wood vs oil I think you have a different flavor, but not anywhere near the difference from that to steam.

I get what you’re saying with blending/grading and my terms are probably incorrect/misleading. I help out some friends who tap 60k and sell a lot of syrup, but grew up tapping 2k. Growing up we would draw off into a tank, check grade, run it through the press directly into retail packaging. Many small producers do this. At my friend, and most modern large producers it all goes into 40’s or 55’s and when we can we are blending the syrup with other boils to make grade. That is probably where I’m misusing the phrase blended.