We like maple syrup. We like the way it tastes, the way it fills in all the little square holes in our waffles and the way the maple-syrup season heralds the coming of spring each year, just when we are so tired of winter we can barely stand it.

Prove us wrong if you can, but we believe that, pound for pound, there is nothing so sweet, straightforward, natural and authentic as Maine maple syrup.

It has only one ingredient and that comes from a tree. It is produced with the same basic process used by the native Americans hundreds of years before Columbus landed.

Actually, that last part may be stretching things just a little, since native Americans made syrup by dropping hot rocks into thick wooden containers filled with sap, according to the Maine Maple Producers Association.

Modern operations use vacuum tubes to collect the sap, and huge oil-fired evaporators to reduce it to syrup.

Nevertheless, the essentials are the same -- 40 gallons of sap in each sticky sweet gallon of syrup.

Nor can that sap be found just anywhere. The right kind only comes from trees that grow in a climate with the correct range of temperatures, which means it is one industry that will never be out-sourced to India or China.

So take your friends, your children or just yourself to a maple syrup producer near you this Maine Maple Sunday -- always the fourth Sunday in March, this year March 23.

It has been a long winter. You have earned it.