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There’s a saying down South about “raising cane.” You know, making a fuss, stirring things up? But in Louisiana, raising cane--as in sugar, not trouble-- is vital to the economy and, as I learned last Thursday, another interesting element of Louisiana’s flavor.

Victor Lamadrid is the chief chemist of Cajun Sugar Cooperative, located deep in the cane fields of New Iberia. Better known as Mr. Vic to the 150 employees of the mill, Lamadrid immigrated to Louisiana from Cuba more than 50 years ago, bringing everything he knows about sugar with him.

“The only thing the communists didn’t take from me is my education,” Lamadrid said as he shared the story of his fateful decision to leave during the early turmoil of the Cuban Revolution. At 82 years old, Lamadrid has devoted his life to the land of Cajun country, and we’re all sweeter for it. In fact, according to a recent article in The New York Times, about half of the sugar cane in the United States is grown right here in Louisiana.

With sparkling blue eyes and a convivial grin, Lamadrid shared the intricate and precise process of transforming muddy sugar cane to sparkling sugar crystals. It starts in the fields, where tight rows of cane are harvested and loaded by the ton into trucks. After being weighed and sampled (to make sure the cane is pure), the trucks are lifted at a 40-degree angle and emptied into a machine where the load is crunched into tiny pieces to be cleaned, cooked, separated and spun. We donned our bright orange hard hats and followed the cane to the mouth of a five-story sugar machine monster.

Here, the chopped and cooked cane becomes a rich caramel-colored syrup. It tastes sharp, but has a sweet aroma that wafts from simmering vats. This is where the factory takes on a pseudo-Willy Wonka feel. Spooky whirring rattles the stairs leading to the top floor of the plant. The syrup is separated into molasses and sugar by eight centrifuge machines, each spinning out 1,000 pounds of sugar every three minutes.

As I watched it spin before my eyes, I sampled the purest sugar I’ll ever eat. The taste wasn’t as sweet and processed as everyday sugar. Just like most of the products we process and re-process, Lamadrid said sugar is healthiest when unrefined.

It’s grinding season so the plant runs 24/7, and when the cane is of good quality, Cajun Sugar Co-Op produces more than 3 million pounds of sugar a day. A sugar mountain is stored in an enormous warehouse across the street from the factory, where the final product is loaded onto barges and shipped to New Orleans to be refined by Domino into the white sugar I stir into my coffee every day.

For Lamadrid, the sugar business is far more than a job and a whole lot more than sweetener. He jokes that the Co-Op won’t let him retire because he’s the only one who can analyze the chemical reactions and measurements to ensure the sugar is perfectly pure. To him, raising cane is life. And as I learned on my trip along the winding back-roads of Louisiana cane country, I’ll never again take sugar for a grain of salt.