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No inferior truffle can get past his nose: Paolo Stacchini is one of Italy’s top truffle “judges.” When the tubers are in season, 7,000 a day have to pass his test.
Stacchini has been in charge of quality control at the truffle fair in Alba for the past 20 years. The Piedmont region that surrounds the town is known as the home of one of the most expensive foods in the world: the white truffle.
The underground fungus, or tuber magnatum pico, as it is officially known, must pass a smell test as well as a visual and touch inspection.
“This specimen is bad, we wouldn’t sell it,” says Stacchini at a demonstration for fair visitors, wrinkling his nose.
Only the ones that pass the test get a stamp of quality and are sold for hefty price tags.
“We’re lucky that we have the right climate conditions and the right vegetation for the white truffle here,” he says.
The truffles found in the Piedmont region of Italy are among the most sought-after in the world. They can’t be cultivated, are sensitive to the weather, have a short shelf life – and garner sky-high prices.
It really is a blessing for the north-west Italian region, because the truffle business is a gold mine.
In Alba and the surrounding Langhe-Roero area, truffles are the biggest money-maker after chocolate manufacturer Ferrero.
“Germany and Switzerland are our main markets,” says Mauro Carbone, head of the national truffle study centre and tourism office.
“This year was really great, there were lots of truffles, and what’s more, they were good ones,” says Carbone.
White truffles prefer damp conditions, but they can’t be too wet.
The 2017 season wasn’t such a good one: After a dry summer there was a dry autumn, and the truffles were poor. And when there are fewer truffles, prices rise – that year, some traders were able to sell them for a whopping US$15,900 per kilogram.
Fortunately for truffle lovers, the 2018 harvest went for considerably less. In mid-November, for example, 100 grams cost 250 euros — the price varies from day to day and depends on quality, and it is continuously updated on the Truffle Stock Exchange.
Part of each year’s spectacle is the auctioning of a giant truffle. In 2018, a businessman from Hong Kong bought an 880-gram specimen for 85,000 euros.
The truffle season begins at the end of September and ends at the end of January. That’s when Filippo Costa pulls his welly boots on and goes truffle-hunting with his dog Lola through the forests.
He is one of 4,000 certified truffle hunters in the region.
He prefers to go out at night: that way the competition can’t see you and dispute the hunting ground. The lack of light and noise means it’s also less distracting for the dog.
Nobody uses pigs here, as they’re harder to train and they’re more likely to guzzle up the valuable goods before they can be secured.
Costa only speaks Piedmontese to his dog. He also advises using a white dog to make it easier to see in the dark, meaning he can use his torch as little as possible.
Searching for truffles is a bit like a drug, he says: “Once you’ve started you can’t stop.” He began looking for the fungi as a child with his father, and his own son has also started.
The white truffle, unlike its black cousin, is a capricious object. It can’t be cultivated and only grows under certain trees. It doesn’t store well and quickly loses its characteristic smell. If it’s frozen, it loses all smell.
All of this is what makes it so expensive. Like other luxury products, scarcity is the magic word.
But what differentiates a white truffle from a Ferrari is that it’s not an artificially produced scarcity. If there were no more, even a millionaire couldn’t buy one, says Alessandro Bonino.
Bonino heads the historic truffle shop Tartufi Morra in Alba. This is where truffles are washed, weighed, packed in wooden boxes and sent off into the world as quickly as possible.
Singapore, Germany, Hong Kong, the United States – despite the sky-high prices, truffles are in demand all over the world.
A white truffle keeps only for several days, so their dispatch has to be prompt.
Bonino also sells truffle oils, pastes and pastas, but these are made with artificial flavouring and have little in common with a real truffle.
Giacomo Morra, who founded the shop and is known in Alba as the “truffle king,” was a skilled salesman.
Not only did he found the fair that still attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists, he also had the marketing brainwave of sending a giant truffle to a celebrity once a year.
Marilyn Monroe, Winston Churchill, Harry Truman and several popes were all the lucky recipients of a massive fungus, and the Alba truffle gained worldwide fame.
But US President Donald Trump won’t be getting one any time soon. “He prefers diet Coke,” says Bonino.
