Truffle Farm

On Sunday we took the excursion to a truffle farm and wine tasting. This might seem a strange decision as Phil cannot eat mushrooms or drink wine. However the alternative involved a lot of walking on cobblestoned streets plus over 70 steps up to a castle, so we went with the easy walking option. It turned out to be a great trip.

To get to the farm we drove through lovely rich countryside with lots of vineyards, farms, villages and woods. While Phil couldn’t sample the wares we did learn a lot about what a difficult business truffle farming is. They can only sell truffles that are of the highest quality and to achieve this result everything must fall into place. The truffles are sown into the roots of trees and grow underground at various depths. They can be anywhere in the plantation so they use specially trained dogs to sniff out their locations. Unfortunately, if there is no rain at the right times, or too much rain, or frost at the wrong time, or the wrong temperatures, snow at the wrong time or not at all, the crop can be wholly or partly ruined. So the farmers have to diversify by running cattle, sheep or pigs, growing wine grapes or even running a vineyard, or growing saffron to make sure they can make a living. Who’d be a farmer!!  But when all the ducks line up they sell the top quality truffles for a cool US$16,000 a kilo!!!  And when conditions are right they can collect up to 30 kgs in 20 minutes, depening on the speed of the detection dog.  They dig where there are truffles as they can smell them from a long way off.  They know how to differentiate between the ripe and unripe truffles.  Initially they used pigs to find them, however they were slow, and would eat some of the truffles they found.  And you thought pigs were only good when they are cooked!!!

Enjoy the photos.