Truffles: where they come from, where they go, how they get there

First of all, forget the idea that you can just rush out with any dog and find a truffle. First you need the right kind of dog, ideally a retriever type dog and one you have the patience to train. You need permission from the landowner, or factory owner who has his own dogs. You have to know where to look, have a good truffle season, and train your dog to stop running about and chasing other dogs and stop by the roots of trees and sniff for truffles for truffles. Then to dig down and to bring them up intact without eating them or destroying them. Not to drop them down the hillside so they disappear, nor start digging somewhere else and burying them again. You then need a restaurant or truffle factory owner who has the clients who want to buy truffles.

I found that truffles don't necessarily grow on nice flat land, but up a steep forested mountain in a place such as Umbria. You have to know where to park your car and have the energy to climb up the hillside.

We took a long path, snaking up and up. Then trees stretch in all directions. I soon got left behind. I had to force myself to puff up, to catch up.

Next is the treasure hunt. For our demo, it looked easy. The leader of our expedition admitted, "We could have saved time and just taken a truffle and buried it for the dogs to find, so we could then have taken you back down again in time for lunch. We didn't."

Naturally, I suspected that was exactly what they did. Yes, you might search and search for hours and find nothing. If it's been a bad season.

If you succeed, you must wrap the crumbly, strong-smelling truffle, and carry your huge dirty-looking brown truffle down the steep hillside again. Without twisting your ankle. I sank deep into the autumn leaves. It's not a place for high heeled shoes nor expensive boots or socks or trousers (as Americans would say, pants). The professionals have all the equipment. Even if it's only a big basket, probably lined.

You need to be a dog lover. And have the patience of St Francis.

I soon got tired of chasing three tail-wagging dogs doing giant circles in different directions. Dogs ran in all directions, up the mountain, down the mountain.

A Good Business
One of my companions from the UK later in the day looked out at all the careful planted and tended vineyards, with the factory with the huge steel vats, and expensive wood barrels at £1000 each to make, only used for two years, more or less, and remarked, "Truffle hunting is a great business to be in. Better than vineyards. Go out with a dog and dig up something which grows itself. All you need to do is find it and sell it."

Not really. Truffles, gold and silver, maple syrup - I went to the World Travel Market in London where the Canada stand served maple syrup every year (until this year when they served bagels). Canada makes maple syrup and has something like 50 per cent or more of the world's supply. They don't have the only maple trees in the world. But they have the ability to organise the maple syrup business and sell the top quality pure product competitively to what has now become a brand name.

The same happened with gold, silver, and railways in the USA. Along comes a Mr Big, organises the business and makes a fortune. The same applies to writing best-selling novels. In theory anybody could do it. But you need the determination to persist through the first year, or five or ten, earning money from some other source.

Other people in your area, or other areas of the world, can come up with a new product, a new use, new packaging. You need to find a new recipe. (Like Crosse and Blackwell in England, two employees who got together and bought out the company they worked for and built it into a nationwide success still going a century later. Heinz - not just baked beans. 57 varieties.

Fight through setbacks. Refine your product. Market your perfect product.When you get demand you have to be able to supply and not disappoint the buyers. Here's where we learned more insights.

Delivering The Goods
Our truffle makers told us the secret of their success, not just finding the truffles, but getting them to the truffle eaters. The Chinese also produce truffles. Those truffles can be shipped cheaply and arrive fifteen days later.

But the Italians can get their truffles to a New York restaurant by courier in 24 hours, says Giorgio. The truffles travel overnight. The truffle company can dig up a truffle, phone a restaurant on another continent, and despatch it by courier.

What if the courier lets them down? I bet you have to be up all day and all night tracking your shipment. Or have an alert on a hotline if there's trouble. Your Michelin starred restaurant has promised a customer, a client or two or three that truffles will be on the menu for a special dinner. You are sending truffles, fresh truffles mind you, to a wedding. You have to jump in your own car and deliver your truffle to the next city. Or send a member of your family or trusted employee, somebody reliable and enterprising, to deliver it. You have that delivery, and all future business to that customer and worldwide reputation, achieve, and to maintain.

What could go wrong? The carrier or courier is too busy. So you send a member of staff with a car. You get a call. Accident on motorway. Two or three hour delay, no guarantee when it will end. So you send a motorbike rider, or go yourself, on a motorbike. All the time, the minutes are ticking by.

The thought of it is enough to put you off your lunch. But it didn't put me off my lunch. Truffles are something of a learned taste. Like anything else, (I remember yogurt - didn't like it first time). I shall have to go back and try truffles three times. (Hint.)

Is there any point in acquiring such an expensive taste if you can't afford to eat truffles every day? Yes. Firstly, you know if you would like them for a special occasion or treat, such as a birthday or wedding. Secondly, if you don't like them, you know that you can donate yours to somebody else who will be grateful. Thirdly, if you have tried three or four times, different qualities, recipes, varieties, and you still son't like them, you can quit feeling that you are missing out and smile indulgently at the excitement of others. You can stop revealing yourself sa somebody who has never tried them, and talk knowledgeably, or express a polite and enthusiastic interest.

So, what if you don't know the people at the truffle factory and can't afford the Michelin restaurant in New York. If you holiday in Umbria you will find lots of restaurants in the locality offering truffles on the menu.

Don't worry that you are party to some kind of fraud. The factory gives permission to local people to go and forage and buys the truffles from them.

So, now when you are looking at truffles on the shelves of your supermarket at Christmas, looking at a special offer from a restaurant on wet Monday lunchtimes in January, you can look at the truffles on the menu and the truffles on your own plate, or the plate of another diner, with appreciation of what it takes to get the truffle from the earth in Umbria and across the world to the package or plate.

In London, England you can buy white and black truffles from Umbria in La Fromagerie cheese shop off Marylebone High Street near Baker Street station.

More information from:
http://urbanitartufi.it
umbriatourism.it
Photos by Angela Lansbury, copyright, November 2016.
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.