All truffles are the flowering bodies, or fungi, of great symbiotic underground networks formed by spores attracted to the root systems of certain trees. Many fungi can be cultivated by inseminating sympathetic tree roots with the right spores, planting the trees in suitable territory, and waiting. Black truffles have been successfully raised this way in France and other parts of the world. But white truffles are altogether more mysterious and delicate than black ones. Attempts to cultivate white truffles have so far failed, even after decades of waiting—and even after a 1980s tulip-craze–like bubble in which Piedmontese landowners invested lifetime savings in planting inseminated trees “guaranteed” to produce truffles.
This stubborn resistance to cultivation keeps Bonfante’s university department busy, and also keeps hunters working. Typical of association-loving Italy, each zone of Piedmont has its own organized union of truffle hunters. It’s hard to get hunters to take time out during truffle season, but I managed to convene a meeting of union spokesmen with the help of the Ceretto winery, which has strong interests in all things Piedmontese (Bruno Ceretto is an active member of the Alba City Council).
The men arrived wearing outdoor regalia at the modern offices of the chamber of commerce—just across the street from the vast Ferrero factory, producer of Nutella, which wafts the fragrance of chocolate and hazelnuts throughout Alba. With their gnarled hands and weatherbeaten faces and old cardigans, they seemed more like French campagnards than the usual Italian man, who is beautifully turned out regardless of social rank.
The hunters naturally want Alba truffles to fetch Alba prices. And they want to block competition from non-Alba truffle merchants who sneak into predawn markets from southern regions and from Slovenia and Istria, across Italy’s northeastern border. I heard again and again that a minimum of 50 percent of “Alba” truffles come from elsewhere, and some people say the total is closer to 70 percent. (The secretive nature of the business makes hard figures impossible to come by.)
Then there is the common method of mixing Alba truffles with pretty but dull truffles from other regions, which absorb some of their perfume. (Truffa, Italian slang for a cheat or imbroglio, derives from a Provençal word for truffle.) Tony May’s irrefutable complaint—his chief aria—is that mixing cheaper truffles with better ones levels out the quality of them all.
The unions have petitioned the government to protect Alba truffles with a “controlled origin” DOC (denominazione di origine controllata) tag. There’s a big catch to this plan: It would mean declaring sales and paying taxes. “We’re not selling drugs,” one hunter told me. “There’s no reason we should be hiding at 4 a.m. at highway exits.” But hiding is part of the whole truffle mystique. A regional exception to a national law permits Piedmontese truffle hunters to work at night—both hunting and selling traditionally have been done under cover of darkness—so as to avoid exposing special spots to rivals. The question is whether hunters would be willing to come out into the light to sell their wares.
These union spokesmen, at least, declare themselves willing to pay taxes in exchange for protection from rival regions that infiltrate the Alba market. Whether the drop in per-person annual truffle findings translates into overall declines in white truffles, they couldn’t say: They don’t keep figures. But they do know that more truffle-hunting permits are issued every year, as weekend hunters look to profit from increased international demand.
The hunters sidestepped my questions of whether overall quality has declined along with individual yield. Quantity and price are their focus. As for quality—well, they had given up potential hunting time to make me understand that their truffles are better than anyone else’s. “It’s always been easy to tell which ones are best,” one said to me. “The ones that stink the most. Compared to our truffles, everyone else’s are potatoes.”
To taste some “potatoes” for myself, I went to Acqualagna, in the region of the Marches, east of Tuscany along the Adriatic. People from Alba consider Acqualagna the realm of the devil—a gigantic producer of pretty, bland truffles that dilute Alba quality when Acqualagna smugglers drive the six hours it takes to get to Piedmont and palm off their goods as the real thing.
It hardly looks evil. Everything is more relaxed in this mountainous area, which, unlike Piedmont, produces all kinds of truffles in many seasons—particularly black ones, which many local landowners have successfully cultivated. Another difference from Piedmont is that hunters go out when they feel like it and when they think they’ll find the most truffles, usually in the early morning and late afternoon. They’re not afraid of the daylight.
The whole town’s economy revolves around truffles. The mayor, Giorgio Remedia, told me that he is trying to get more hotels built to attract tourists who can enjoy the salubrious air and go on guided truffle walks—something inconceivable in secretive Piedmont. “I want people to consume our own truffles right here,” he said. “Then they’ll see that they’re just as good as anything from Alba.” The only advantage Piedmont has, he claims, is being closer to the big cities of Turin and Milan, so that diners can have fresher truffles.
The mayor was extremely defensive of his truffles. “Plenty of Slovenian and Istrian truffles are sold as Acqualagna truffles too, you know,” he said, making it clear that some people are eager to exploit his region’s good name. And to drag it down: Eastern European hunters, unbounded by Italian seasonal limits, start searching before mid-September, which weakens the quality of later truffles and means the entry of lesser truffles at the height of the season. (The best time for white truffles is mid-November to early January—not October, when people start going mad to find them.)
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