Rowan Jacobsen - Truffle Hound

To whomever first took a whiff and thought, Why not?

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

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CONTENTS

Try to explain why you love her, and what the attic smelled like.

RACHEL HERZ, THE SCENT OF DESIRE

About a dozen species of truffles play prominent roles in this tale, but two have starring roles: Tuber magnatum , Italys celebrated white truffle, which is often called the Alba; and Tuber melanosporum , the queen of black truffles, also known as the Prigord, after the region of France that helped make it famous. Neither of these truffles is constrained to the region its named for, so theres a growing consensus to move away from place-specific names. In this book, I follow current naming conventions and refer to them as the white and the black winter, and I use the most established names for the other species as well. Most truffles, however, have several aliases; for a cheat sheet of whos who, and what theyre like, please refer to photo insert. Bonne route.

Carlo Marenda and I pick our way through the cool, mossy woods by the light of his headlamp, his truffle dogs Emi and Buk just ahead, like ghosts at the edge of the dark. Emi sniffs the ground around each tree, a quick once-over for the slightest hint of the maddening scent of a white truffle, which lives several inches underground but is pungent enough to grab the attention of any mammal with a good sniffer.

Its late fall in northern Italy, and the white puffs of Carlos breath catch in his headlamp. The Italians say the best time to truffle is when theres a nip in the air and the trees are bare. They also say the best time is at night, when the air is cool, the wind is still, and truffle scents pool on the forest floor.

These trees arent quite bare, but the nip is there. For hours weve been wandering a Game of Thrones landscape of dark forests and medieval hill towns, every one topped by the jagged silhouette of a castle, dousing our lamps and lying low whenever somebody stirs in a neighboring farmhouse. Carlo has assured me its okay to hunt these scraps of woodland nestled between Barolos famously steep vineyards, but Im not 100 percent clear on what okay means. Im intensely alert, my consciousness pushed out to the tips of eyes, ears, skin, nostrils.

We pad along, the only sound the trickle of the creek we are following and Carlos soft, steady Dai, dai, dai as he urges the dogs onward. Go, go, go. Emi and Buk are Lagotto Romagnolos, an ancient Italian truffle-hunting breed. Lagottos come in various combinations of brown, white, and cream. Adorable mops with bright beady eyes and bonkers enthusiasm, they remind me of Animal from The Muppet Show . Originally bred centuries ago for retrieving ducks from the marshes of Romagna, they are believed to be the ancestors of other water dogs like poodles, which they resemble. Their intelligence and energy make them excellent trufflers, but the training takes years. A skilled Lagotto can set you back $10,000.

Insanity? Perhaps. But white truffles are the worlds most expensive food. In Alba, the city a few miles north of here where the annual Alba International White Truffle Fair is in full swing, it costs 3 to 4 per gram to get them shaved over your pasta. In the United States, they can fetch $3,000 a pound. They command such prices because no other food produces such arresting aromas, a cascade of sensation that can bring first-timers to tears, and because they can be found only in the wild, growing symbiotically with the roots of certain trees. A good truffle dog pays for itself.

Pigs were humanitys original truffling partners. Pigs are natural and enthusiastic consumers of truffles, and truffling probably evolved from farmers observing their sows uprooting truffles with abandon. By the Middle Ages, and likely long before, farmers in France and Italy had trained their pigs for the hunt.

But pigs love truffles too passionately. Its difficult to stop them from eating the truffles they find (stories abound of nine-fingered truffle hunters), so by the 1700s people were already switching to dogs, which happily work for treats. Besides, truffling is a secretive affair; if youre loading a four-hundred-pound porker into the passenger seat of your Fiat, everyone knows exactly what youre doing.

Suddenly Emi doubles back on her trail and plants her nose to the ground, sweeping back and forth. Piano, piano, Carlo coos to her. Slow slow. She lingers at the base of a poplar tree, and I begin to get my hopes up, but then she pulls away and keeps hunting, and again I wonder what Im doing out here in the middle of the night in a muddy forest at the foot of some of the most celebrated vineyards in the world, when I could be in one of Barolos spectacular cantinas drinking those wines instead.

But I know. Im here because a few days ago I walked into a restaurant, here in the peak of truffle season, when the whole region goes pazzo for the little white fungi, and there in the middle of the dining room was a fat one under glass like a bulbous pearl, and I lifted the glass and took a sniff and my world exploded.

I have smelled lots of yumminess before, but this was different. It was not the warm, cozy scent of chocolate chip cookies baking. Nor was it mouthwatering. It was hardly a food scent at all. It was more like catching a glimpse of a satyr prancing across the dining room floor while playing its flute and flashing its hindquarters at you. You think, What the hell was that? And then you think, I have to know.

That all went through my head in the seconds it took me to walk from the truffle display to my table, where I joined a distinguished group of wine writers and food aficionados. This was an important meeting, for which wed all flown great distances, and I was supposed to be bringing my A game. Instead, I sat there in a daze, experiencing something Ive recognized many times since: I couldnt stop thinking about that truffle. This wasnt an intellectual exercise; I believe I had a look on my face like the one my dog gets when he discovers some exquisitely stinky carcass along the roadside.

Introductions were made, at which point I said, Im sorry, I have to go smell that again. I stood up, set my napkin down, walked back to the display, lifted the glass, and snorted like John Belushi.

Truffles have very little taste. Like flowers, their strength is their scent, and they wield it for the same purpose: to attract animals that will help them reproduce. Like mushrooms, truffles are the fruiting bodies of subterranean fungi that live their lives in the soil as netlike filaments attached to tree roots. But unlike mushrooms, which use wind and water to disperse their spores, truffles stay underground, wrapped in a protective coat known as a peridium, and keep their spores on the inside, like a mushroom that never unfolds. Most are about the size of a button mushroom, though they can get much larger.