Riccardo Boresti, an employee of Gruppo Urbani Tartufi, checks a basket of white truffles from the company’s operations in Italy’s Umbria region.Photo by Fabrizio Troccoli/The Globe and Mail
Over the centuries, hunting and selling truffles in Italy has changed little. known as the hunter cavatori (Excavator) They were traveling along a secret forest path with hunting pigs. Animals pick up on the scent of mature truffles (which can be described in many ways as oaky, nutty, pungent, or garlicky) and dig them out. In recent decades, trained dogs have been used to replace pigs, for the good reason that dogs are not gluttonous and are therefore less likely to eat unpleasant prizes.
And what a prize! Truffles, whether the black variety or the rarer white variety, are so valuable that they are considered “dirty diamonds.”of cavatori Truffles were usually sold to local restaurants and rural markets, and sometimes exported using agents.
Today, truffles are big business, especially in Umbria, a landlocked region in the center of the Italian peninsula that forms the heart of the industry. Even something small can be worth several hundred euros. Larger ones can cost thousands of dollars.
Buyers are increasingly family-run agricultural companies with sales networks around the world. And although completely natural, more and more truffles are coming from specialized farms where they are cultivated.
“The truffle system is evolving,” says Ugo Giannatoni, an agronomist in Umbria who works as a truffle consultant to farmers and is himself a partner in a truffle farm. “Truffles have become a global market. For us Italians, truffles are a common food, but overseas they are a luxury item.”
Although these black truffles are more common than white truffles, they can still command high prices.
Just as they favored fine French and Italian wines decades ago, wealthy Asians are taking an interest in underground fungi, encouraging truffle hunters, farmers and local agriculture ministries to produce and export more. As a result, their prices are exorbitant and rising.
Umbria’s industry is happy to cooperate. The late Hong Kong casino magnate Stanley Ho is thought to have paid the highest price ever for a truffle. In 2007, he wowed audiences at a charity auction when he bid $330,000, the price of a Ferrari, for a 1.5 kilogram white truffle. Two years later, he paid the same price for a white truffle weighing 1.3 kg.
Truffles don’t have transparent market prices like oil or Florida orange juice. Prices vary widely depending on the size and type of truffle, season, local supply, and buyer. High-end restaurants often pay a premium of 50% or more for white truffles.
Other factors affecting prices range from climate change, which is reducing yields in Italy, to competition from black-market truffles in China, where the true origin may be unknown to buyers. The supply of highly trained truffle hunting dogs needed to find both wild and cultivated truffles will also be affected. The fewer dogs there are, the lower the supply and the higher the price. Truffle hunters can become violent towards their rivals. There are many stories of dogs being killed with poisoned meatballs and water.
In December, the U.S. website of Gruppo Urbani Tartuffi of Umbria, Europe’s oldest truffle seller and exporter, listed the price of 8 ounces (227 grams) of white truffles from Alba, in Italy’s northwestern Piedmont region, at US$3,890. It was posted. A similar quantity of the much more common black winter Umbrian truffle, which is in season from December to March, cost $1,095.
At these nurseries, Urbani injects the seedlings with truffle spores. This is a process called mycorrhization.
These fungi-hardened trees are over 10 years old. Truffle trees in Umbria grow on various private lands.
“For us Italians, truffles are a common food, but abroad they are a luxury item,” says agronomist Ugo Giannatoni.
The biggest change in production over the last decade or so has been brought about by the introduction of farmed truffles. Business is rapidly expanding in Umbria, where there are currently around 1,000 hectares of truffle farms. This term is a bit of a misnomer. Because they look more like neat little forests than farmland.
The process begins in nurseries where thousands of seedlings (oak, hazel, hornbeam) are grown. The roots are inoculated with truffle spores and the seedlings are left in the nursery for two to four years before being transplanted to various private sites. After five or six years, truffles with commercial value can be found. The Umbrian regional government pays about 60 percent of the cost of converting unused private land into truffle production.
Many things can go wrong. For example, the fence around the property must be constantly repaired. “We need a fence because the boars eat the truffles,” Giannatoni said. “They can eat €1,000 worth of truffles in three hours.”
The Globe and Mail visited a five-hectare truffle farm managed by Truffleland, a division of Urbani. Last year they produced 100 kilograms of black truffles worth around 80,000 euros.
On a cold day in early December, Truffleland’s general manager Riccardo Cesari discovered, quite by chance, a rather large coal-black truffle with his bare hands near the base of a tree. No dogs were involved.
“We came here yesterday with our dogs and they couldn’t find this truffle, even though it was close to the surface,” he said. “The truffles didn’t have an odor, which means they weren’t ripe.”
Riccardo Cesari examines black truffles several centimeters underground. Finding a mature truffle usually requires a dog trained to detect its distinctive scent.
Urbani is Europe’s oldest truffle seller and exporter. General director Andrea Pascolini sees growing demand for its products in markets such as Asia.
If the biggest change in the harvest side of the truffle industry is cultivation, the rise of companies like Urbani is the biggest change in the business side.
Urbani was founded in Umbria in 1852 by Constantin Urbani. He exported his truffles to France, taking advantage of the French thirst for truffles, and soon added Germany and Switzerland to his sales list. The company is currently run by his sixth generation Urbanis. The sophisticated headquarters in the countryside outside Spoleto includes a truffle cleaning, sorting and packing center and truffle museum, and its highlights include a letter of appreciation signed by then US President-elect Richard Nixon in November 1968. is on display. He wrote that he and his wife, Pat, received a gift box containing Urbani truffles, which were used in a “delicious” truffle chicken dish.
Andrea Pascolini, general director of Urbani and one of the few non-family members at the top of the company, said the leading Italian truffle company has steadily expanded to include a wide range of packaged products such as porcini mushrooms and truffles. I’m watching as I go. -Infused olive oil and butter. Turnover is 80 million euros per year, most of which comes from exporting fresh truffles. “The market continues to expand, with China, Singapore and Taiwan being the newest markets,” he said. “This business has great potential. Italian companies cannot compete on quantity, but they can compete on quality. We export truffles, an Italian luxury, to the world.”
