“Whosoever Says Truffle, Utters A Grand Word, Which Awakens Erotic And Gastronomic Ideas” – Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
A truffle is the fruiting body of a subterranean Ascomycete fungus, predominantly one of the many species of the genus Tuber. Truffles are ectomycorrhizal fungi and are therefore usually found in close association with tree roots. Spore dispersal is accomplished through fungivores, animals that eat fungi
Some of the truffle species are highly prized as food. French gourmet Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin called truffles “the diamond of the kitchen”. Edible truffles are held in high esteem in French, Croatian, Georgian, Bulgarian, Greek, Italian, Middle Eastern, and Spanish cuisine, as well as in international haute cuisine
In April 2016, a 4.16 pound white truffle—the so-called “World’s Largest”—sold at a Sotheby’s auction for $61,250 to a phone bidder in China. It was actually a bargain price for the over-sized fungus. Last year’s large crop, a result of abundant rain in Italy, has seen wholesale prices drop by 50 percent from two years ago
Urbani Truffles, First started in Italy in 1852, now sells to 68 different countries. Urbani’s white truffles, which are rarer and more expensive than the black truffle, still come from Italy
CEO Vittorio Giordano/Urbani Truffles: “Truffle is a wild product, it is a natural product. It is not something you can cultivate or control,” Giordano explains. This unpredictability contributes to the extreme prices truffles can fetch. People have tried for generations, to no avail, to farm truffles. And while recent attempts in the U.S. and Australia to recreate truffle-conducive habitats by planting chestnut, oak, and hazelnut trees have shown modest success, the crop has been insubstantial and rarely are full truffles salvageable
Urbani works with a network of 18,000 people to hunt for truffles around Italy. “A single truffle hunter with a dog can find a small amount—two ounces, three ounces, quarter of a pound—so we need a lot of people to make sure we are able to collect quantity we need,” he says. All those employees only drive the price up further
CEO Vittorio Giordano/Urbani Truffles: “Pigs eat truffles. They don’t want to give the product back,” Giordano says. So, dogs were trained to put their noses to use for the cause and all they ask in return is a treat from their handler. (In fact, use of the pig to hunt truffles has been prohibited since 1985 because they damage the truffle beds in their zeal to get to the scent.)
“The truffle we deliver to the restaurants and distributors, less than 36 hours before were underground in Italy,” Giordano says. And the cost to make that happen adds up. Black truffles, the more common variety, currently cost about $95 per ounce while white truffles top the charts at $168 per ounce
October marks the start of white-truffle season, the time of year when the rare mushrooms are showered on dishes, signifying luxury to even the most jaded palates. One of Daniel Boulud’s favorite stories involves Puff Daddy, as he was known at the time, urging the chef to “shave that bitch” onto his food
Truffles are rare. The white ones are only available a couple of months of the year, almost exclusively from one part of Italy, where they must be foraged by special pigs, and there are fewer of them, and of lesser quality, every year. They are, in short, the perfect luxury commodity, precious and getting more so all the time
White truffles have a unique aroma, a combination of newly plowed soil, fall rain, and burrowing earthworms. The global appetite for white truffles, especially the ones from around Alba, Italy, has utterly outstripped the harvest. From Macau to Dubai to Chicago, there are never enough to go around
While the inferior black or Périgord truffle can be cultivated, right now there is no other way to get white ones except to set pigs (and, in recent years, dogs) loose on the hills of the Italian piedmont, snorting with pleasure and excitement at the thought of finding precious fungi that their owners won’t allow them to eat. You can buy a Louis Vuitton purse at an outlet mall and an Aston Martin on eBay. But you can’t get truffles without major trouble
Key chemical compounds intrinsic to the aroma of truffles have been isolated and are sold as truffle oil, a substance so stinky you can smell it from a mile away. Black truffles are in mass production in China and are supposedly getting better all the time.
Ancient Romans believed that the truffle was created when lightning struck damp earth. Today, we know that the small tuber grows underground in the wild forests of northern and central Italy. Even so, modern Italians – and Eatalians – maintain the magic of the truffle, referring to the earthy and aromatic ingredient as “a fairy apple,” “a diamond of the kitchen,” and “the gem of poor lands.”
There are three varieties of truffle. The white variety is pungent with notes of shallot, the black is earthy and robust, and burgundy tends toward the delicate and aromatic
Truffles cannot be planted or tamed, so each variety is only available a few months out of the year. These fragrant fungi taste best fresh, so plan to enjoy white and burgundy truffles from September to December, winter black truffles from December to early March, bianchetti truffles in February and March, and summer black and white truffles from May to August
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