![\"HillsBigBurgundy201303](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/limestonehills.co.nz\/Wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/HillsBigBurgundy201303-3.jpg?resize=480%2C320&ssl=1\")
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M<\/span>onday, March 18th 2013: it’s raining — drizzling, to be exact — the first substantial rain since the end of January, and we’re out in the truffle trees with Paul Thompson from POD Gardening<\/a>. He’s shooting a photo essay about Limestone Hills and truffles, so Rosie does the business and sniffs out a ripe Burgundy truffle of 533 grammes (that’s the lump under her nose). It’s the largest Burgundy truffle we’ve ever harvested, beating the 529 g monster we dug up at the end of January. It’s currently being enjoyed by the patrons of Saggio di Vino<\/a> in Christchurch — as was that first one<\/a>. Here’s a close up:<\/p>\n The scar at the top was caused by my efforts to excavate the monster, but shows the hazel\/chocolate-coloured flesh rather nicely. There was plenty of nice aroma — a great truffle — and further evidence of just how productive this little patch of trees seems to be. So far this year we have harvested 4.446 kg of truffles. Some was over-ripe, and will be used as inoculum to produce more Burgundy-infected trees, but the best have been wonderful. This is no second-rate truffle: it’s an affordable ($1 per gramme, as opposed to $3\/g for bianchetto and Perigord black) taste of the real thing. I was quite pleased\u2026<\/p>\n Paul’s full photo essay will appear at POD Gardening soon. Meanwhile, I will be out getting the other truffieres into shape for the harvest — mowing grass, felling weeds and trying to tread lightly to avoid damaging any crop. The bianchetto season looks promising — Rosie’s already found a couple of not quite ripe truffles — but I have my fingers crossed for the Perigord black. We’ve had a hot summer — good for melanosporum<\/em> — and I’ve been providing plenty of water, but it will be a while before I get a feel for what might be going on. The heat has also been good for the pinot noir: there’s what looks like an excellent crop hanging in the vines, and Theo the winemaker tells me it’s tasting good. More fingers crossed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Monday, March 18th 2013: it’s raining — drizzling, to be exact — the first substantial rain since the end of January, and we’re out in the truffle trees with Paul Thompson from POD Gardening. He’s shooting a photo essay about Limestone Hills and truffles, so Rosie does the business and sniffs out a ripe Burgundy … Continue reading Our bountiful Burgundy summer<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[20,48,70,118],"class_list":["post-763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food-wine","category-truffles-farm","tag-burgundy-truffle","tag-limestone-hills","tag-rosie","tag-saggio-di-vino"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/limestonehills.co.nz\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/limestonehills.co.nz\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/limestonehills.co.nz\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/limestonehills.co.nz\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/limestonehills.co.nz\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=763"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/limestonehills.co.nz\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":765,"href":"https:\/\/limestonehills.co.nz\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763\/revisions\/765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/limestonehills.co.nz\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/limestonehills.co.nz\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/limestonehills.co.nz\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"HillsBigBurgundy201303\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/limestonehills.co.nz\/Wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/HillsBigBurgundy201303.jpg?resize=480%2C320&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n![\"HillsBigBurgundy201303](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/limestonehills.co.nz\/Wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/HillsBigBurgundy201303-2.jpg?resize=480%2C363&ssl=1\")
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