Merle Maple
1884 State Route 98 Attica, NY 14011
Lyle Merle, Dottie Merle, Eileen Downs, & Kristina Copeland (Partners)
Merle Maple
1884 State Route 98 Attica, NY 14011
Lyle Merle, Dottie Merle,
Eileen Downs, & Kristina Copeland (Partners)
585.535.7136
We market our products through our website and farm store, we also wholesale to stores, and to other maple producers so they can add products to their line. Since we have the license to produce these products and this is our full-time livelihood, we can help producers who don’t want to go through the licensing process or who are doing their maple business as well as another job. They can buy our products without labels so they can sell with their own name on them.
Visit our website at www.merlemaple.com, give us a call at 585-535-7136, or stop in at our Farm at 1884 State Route 98 in Attica, New York.
Merle Maple’s Story:
In 1844 the Merle family came to America from Germany. They discovered a German settlement in South Attica and bought a farm and settled down there. In 1923, Arthur E. Merle, Sr. and wife Mary Louise Broadbrooks Merle purchased a farm on Merle Road in the town of Attica – this farm was lost during the Great Depression.
In 1934, the family purchased a farm in the valley and moved to its present location. Arthur E. Merle, Jr. and his wife Florence Chamberlain Merle were married in 1940 and continued to farm the land and raise their family of four sons and one daughter. At that time, they were using buckets to gather sap and taking their horse drawn sled through the woods to dump the sap into. Arthur, Jr. and his four sons ran the farm’s three enterprises – a dairy, a poultry operation and the maple business.
In 1995, Lyle Merle took over the maple business– he is the 4th generation of Merle’s to produce maple syrup. He says he’s lucky the family moved to the valley because “sap runs downhill!” In 2019, Lyle and his wife Dottie took on two new partners – Eileen Downs and Kristina Copeland and the Farm is now an LLC, insuring its continued success.
In 1958, the maple operation made the innovative change from hanging buckets to using tubing. Not only did the tubing make gathering sap easier, it allowed tapping on very steep hills that could not be accessed with the bucket system. The business has grown over the years from 1,000 buckets to a 20,000-tap operation where we produce 9,000+ gallons of syrup each Spring.
Many improvements have also been made to the boiling process, such as the addition of a Reverse Osmosis system. The RO is an ultra-filterization system that filters out water and saves the sugar-concentrated sap. This change was a big time saver, and also provided a big savings in fuel for boiling.
Supporting the overall Maple Industry has always been a goal – Lyle’s dad, Arthur, Jr. was inducted into the International Maple Museum’s Hall of Fame in 1998. The NY State Department of Ag & Markets presents the Hubbell Award annually to a maple producer who has worked to further the education of maple sugaring. Arthur received the award in 1994, Lyle’s mom Florence received it in 1998, and Lyle and Dottie were given the award in 2010.
Along with bottling many different containers of pure maple syrup, Merle Maple LLC has a NYS Agriculture & Markets licensed kitchen where a variety of pure maple products and products using maple syrup as an ingredient are made. We are inspected three times a year to maintain this license. Presently, along with pure maple syrup, we make maple sugar candy, granulated maple sugar, cinnamon maple toast topping, maple spreads (aka cream) – traditional, robust, cinnamon, raspberry and bourbon, flavored maple syrup – bourbon, strawberry, blueberry and raspberry, hot and sweet maple mustard, maple BBQ sauce, sweet maple pizza and wing sauce, maple hot sauce, maple garlic seasoning, apple butter, pepper jelly and maple cotton candy. We believe our quality and consistency of product is what is growing our business.
We also hold two tourist events a year – Maple Weekend in March and a Fall Maple Festival in October. We have been doing the Maple Weekends for 26 years. It has grown over the years. It takes most of our extended family to be able to make it happen. We give tours of our sugarhouse, rides to the sugarbush, tapping demonstrations, taste samples, and other activities. Speaking of tasting products, you have to taste our Maple BBQ Sauce to appreciate it – once you try it, you will be hooked. Lyle puts it on everything! For the Fall Maple Festival, we do tours of our processing facility and people get to see how we make our gourmet products using pure maple syrup. 2020 was the first year for the Fall Festival and we are planning to make it a yearly event.
