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The Festival du Voyageur is Western Canada’s largest winter festival. It takes place from the 17th to the 26th of Fe"brrrrr"uary this year. Festival du Voyageur shares and celebrates our French-Canadian and fur-trader history through the excitement of music, beautiful snow sculptures, sleigh rides, traditional French-Canadian foods and, of course, camaraderie.
   
As a child, my favourite thing at Festival was to go to the Taffy Trough where maple syrup is poured on snow to make taffy on a stick. Yum!
   
Maple syrup is part of our Canadian heritage. No one is quite sure how long people have been making maple syrup. It is said that Aboriginal folks were the first to start tapping the trees for the sap and, in the early days of colonization, they showed French settlers how to tap the tree trunk near the end of February when alternating freezing and thawing temperatures generally begin.  The settlers would make their rounds to the sugar maples, drilling one-centimetre holes about five cm into the trunk of the tree. They would then insert their spouts, hang their buckets and wait until mid-March/beginning of April, when freezing and thawing temperatures would change the pressure inside the tree and the sap would start flowing. The clear, slightly sweet liquid would begin to drip into the buckets. The maple water is transformed into maple syrup in what’s known as a Sugar Shack. The collected sap is boiled down into syrup. Its distinct maple taste comes only through the boiling of the sap.
   
This unique part of our history can also be enjoyed as a liqueur. Sweet Sippin’ Maple Whisky is a blend of Highwood’s Canadian Rye five-year-old whisky and Canada’s finest maple syrup, and that’s all — no additives or preservatives. So pull off your mukluks, sit back, pour yourself a glass of this delicious whisky liqueur from its unique maple leaf-shaped bottle and enjoy.
   
Elan is the Product Consultant at the Eastwinds Liquor Mart.