Summer is tailing off into autumn, the nights are drawing in, and thoughts are turning to the winter truffle season. Last weekend, the amazingly charming Peg had her first refresher course of the year – just a quick sniff to see if she remembered what she was supposed to be doing.

I have four 35mm film canisters with pierced lids in the freezer. Each contains a chunk of last year’s truffle. All I did was bury them a couple of inches down in the soil around four trees, and leave them there for an hour or two to develop some scent. Then I ran through Peg’s pre-hunt routine: on with the collar and lead, a couple of strips of Schmakos as treats stuffed into a pocket (she spots that unerringly), grab a trowel fromthe garage, and then we walk down to the truffière. We get to the trees, I tell her to start sniffing, and off she goes. She finds all four in about three minutes – too easy. Next time I’ll have to make her work harder, perhaps by scattering the baits over a larger area. But it was good to see that she remembered what her job is. All I need now is some reassurance that the real things are forming in the brulées round the trees. My appendages are crossed.

Oregon has more than white truffles. The Portland Times has a very interesting piece on Oregon Black truffles, praising them highly:

“It’s like a treasure hunt,” says Jim Wells, a director at MycoLogical Natural Products in Eugene. Mycology is the study of fungi, and this company specializes in wild mushrooms, including truffles, picked from the surrounding forests.

Wells is a proponent of Oregon black truffles, which he calls “the premier truffle on the planet.” They’re fruity and versatile, he says, with a subtle flavor that changes from day to day.

Like many fans, Wells thinks that Oregon truffles are under-appreciated. He says people often don’t realize how good the local product is because they taste truffles that have been mishandled. Both black and white varieties are extremely fragile, and a few days can make the difference between superb and dud. European truffles have the advantage of a longer shelf life.”

I suspect that describing the Oregon black as the “premier truffle on the planet” is either good salesmanship or betrays a sad lack of knowledge of other black truffles, but the Oregon white is certainly worth attention. Charles Lefevre, in a recent email (where he thanks me for the “tongue in cheek” comment below), tells me of a trial he recently conducted between Tuber magnatum and good specimens of Tuber gibbosum:

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Chinese truffles look a lot like Perigord Black truffles, cost a lot less, but have less flavour and aroma. They’ve been a major source of fraud over the last ten years. Time Asia digs into the issue this week, and provides plenty of colourful info:

From the French perspective, the bad news in this piece is the discovery that Tuber indicum out-competes melanosporum. There are fears that indicum may find its way into French truffieres, even unconfirmed reports that it’s already happened.

“We saw in experiments that Tuber indicum is very dominant, competitive and aggressive,” frets Gerard Chevalier, a researcher at INRA. He paints a scenario in which errant spores from imported Chinese truffles disperse into the air, contaminate the French countryside and do ecological battle with their more fragile cousin.”

It might be better for the rest of the world if the Chinese discovered a taste for their own truffles, but that doesn’t seem likely:

“None of that, though, changes one irksome fact that has limited Wu’s business. For all their gastronomic enthusiasm for endangered sea animals or all matter of rare mammalian life, the Chinese so far appear immune to the pleasures of a black truffle. Mushroom gatherer Li Kun shakes his head when asked whether he enjoys the flavor of the black nuggets he’s scooping up from the loamy soil near Hama. “When we’re really hungry, we eat them covered with soy sauce, coriander, chili paste and MSG,” he says. “That way you don’t have to taste the truffle too much, only the sauce.”

[Update: 10/1/08: The above is not true. Local populations in Yunnan and Sichuan were well aware of their truffles, and very happy to eat them.]

Truffle poaching is becoming a real problem in France, according to Newsweek. As much as 10 percent of this season’s crop may have been stolen, truffle growers are up in arms, and the gendarmes are out in force with night vision goggles. But is there a high-tec answer?

In December, Cholin proposed embedding a microchip in truffles to track stolen ones using Global Positioning System satellites. The idea was discussed at a meeting of the French Federation of Truffle Growers, but didn’t go far. One drawback: police would have no way of distinguishing fleeing thieves from roaming boars, who also fancy truffles. Another: the tracking technology is similar to the radio transmitters naturalists use to follow birds, but it won’t be small enough to go unnoticed in truffles for another decade, according to Franck Pantaleo, head radio-communications researcher at Saphelec, a firm in Marseilles.

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If our British friend has some optimistic views on truffle yields, so does Charles Lefevre of New World Truffieres, in Eugene, Oregon. According to Forbes, he’s dreaming of a white (Italian white) Christmas:

His other goal is to cultivate Italian white truffles–a feat he says no one in the world has yet accomplished. He has inoculated seedlings with Italian white truffle and kept the resulting mycorrhizae alive for three years, so far. “If you could cultivate Italian whites,” he says, “and if your trees managed to produce a hundred pounds per acre–which is common with French blacks–then at $2,000 a pound you’d make $200,000 per acre per year.”

Lefevre dreams on: “If you had 10 acres, you could work leisurely for maybe five weeks each winter and have a $2 million annual income.”

When truffle pigs fly.

Having met Charles, I think I can say that his tongue must have been firmly in his cheek. The Forbes article is worth a read, though.

The truffle business in Britain is hotting up. First there was Truffles UK, set up by Nigel Haddon-Paton and Adrian Cole to produce truffle-infected trees using technology licensed from New Zealand. Now there’s a young bloke called Paul Thomas who has been trying to raise money to set up truffieres using trees infected using technology he’s developed. He even took his quest to the BBC, who featured his business on Dragon’s Den a week or two ago.

The latest news is, apparently, that his deal has fallen through. His website suggests that:

Using 2,500 of our trees on a 5 hectare site, we should achieve a production in excess of 1000 kg per year. That represents an annual turnover in excess of £1 million.

In other words, 200kg of truffle per hectare. On every hectare. Optimistic would be a mild word to use to describe that yield. Perhaps that’s why the deal didn’t work out. In my experience of seeking funding for start-ups, you don’t dazzle your backers with promises of huge returns: nobody will believe you.

What do I think a reasonable yield might be? 20 to 40kg/hectare. That’s achievable, in our experience in NZ, and still gives you a good return. Good enough for me, anyway.

I’ve been working on my chapter about dogs. In browsing the web for pictures of truffle dogs, and especially the Italian breed called lagotto romagnolo, I came across this site. Grist to the mill: they look like a sort of poodle crossed with terrier. Not as charming as the incredibly charming Peg, but they won’t chase rabbits. An advantage when rabbits are everywhere.

Peg’s two next month, and I know that some time in the next few years we’ll have to start training her successor. Would a lagotto be good? I had dismissed the idea as being too convoluted and expensive when I clicked on this:

I daren’t let my daughter see this, or expensive dogs will be flying round the world.