Nicole Bentler: Pocono Maple, Before The Syrup

I sat down with Nicole Bentler this week — a health and wellness pro turned maple farmer, who bought a run-down, two-hundred-year-old farm in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania back in 2019 with no real plan beyond having a place to bring her family.

That farm is now Pocono Maple Water, a farm-to-bottle maple water and maple syrup brand, and Nicole's one of only a handful of female-owned maple farms in the country. We got into what maple water actually is before it ever becomes syrup, the finding about our water supply that made her trademark the phrase "What's In Your Water," and why she's turned down Target and Walmart more than once to stay direct-to-consumer.

Website:

www.poconomaplewater.com

Instagram: @poconomaplewater

Instagram: @poconomountainmaple

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CHAPTERS / TIMESTAMPS

Timestamps pulled from raw transcript markers — confirm exact in/out points against the edited cut before publishing.

00:00 — Cold open: cracking a maple water on mic, and the question everyone asks first

00:44 — What maple water actually is, and how it's different from syrup

02:57 — Buying a run-down farm in 2019 with zero plans to build a beverage brand

05:19 — Six to eight miles a day tapping trees in the snow

06:27 — The estrogen finding behind the "What's In Your Water" trademark

09:53 — Big bottled water brands, spring-water lawsuits, and knowing where your water comes from

14:08 — Three bears, a raided bee yard, and building a team in a corner of agriculture with almost nobody under 40

18:17 — The six-week harvest, the subscription model, and turning down Target and Walmart on purpose

20:32 — The cans-vs-cartons-vs-glass packaging fight with her partner Dante

25:10 — What maple water actually does for the body, and the empty-stomach test

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