Deep in a dense forest in Italy’s northwestern Piedmont region, the white Alba truffle is hunted as excited dogs zigzag and dig in the wet earth.
But the culinary treasure is becoming increasingly rare, undermined by climate change.
‘Go find it! Where is it?’ Carlo Marenda, a part-time truffle hunter, calls on Gigi and Buk, seven-month-old and thirteen-year-old crosses between the Spinone Italiano and Lagotto Romagnolo varieties, prized for their keen sense of smell.
Autumn leaves crunch under the weight of boots sinking into muddy ground. Beneath a picturesque hillside vineyard not far from Alba, paths wind along the Rio della Fava, through moist soil ideal for growing truffles.
Alba’s white truffle, the most prestigious in the world, is sought after by gourmets and star chefs all over the world. It is an underground fungus that grows in symbiosis with certain hardwood trees by attaching to their roots.
Its intense and refined scent, a mixture of hay, garlic and honey, allows hunting dogs to detect it, even if the truffle is sometimes buried up to a meter deep.
Carlo Marenda, 42, was introduced to truffle hunting at the age of five by a family friend and founded the association “Save the Truffle” in 2015, together with Edmondo Bonelli, a researcher in natural sciences.
It was an eighty-year-old ‘trifulau’ loner, Giuseppe Giamesio, known as ‘Notu’ and the last member of a family with a centuries-old truffle tradition, who revealed his secrets to him and left his dogs just before his death in 2014.
The master’s message was a testament: “If we want to prevent the disappearance of the truffle, we must protect the forests, stop polluting the waterways and plant new ‘truffle trees'”.
Ten years later, thanks to donations and the support of some wine growers, the association has planted more than 700 such trees in the hilly Langhe area, including poplars, oaks and lindens.
– Notu’s legacy –
“Notu passed on to me his passion for truffle hunting and tree conservation,” said Marenda, getting out of his metallic gray Fiat Panda 4X4, the favorite car of truffle hunters.
Over the past thirty years, the area devoted to white truffles in Italy has fallen by 30 percent, gradually making way for more profitable vineyards, as well as hazelnut orchards.
The Langhe hills supply a large quantity of hazelnuts to the chocolate giant Ferrero, which was founded in 1946 in Alba, a small prosperous town of 30,000 inhabitants.
But the biggest threat to the white truffle, whose harvest was classified by UNESCO as an Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2021, is climate change.
Global warming, drought, deforestation and sudden temperature changes are all factors that weaken this fungus’s natural habitat.
To survive, the truffle needs cold and humidity. However, in early November the temperature was 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit).
“As the summer weather continues, production will definitely drop,” he complained.
– Rising prices –
The harvest, which runs from October to the end of January, is getting shorter. And now that the cold and snow have been postponed, “the aroma of the truffles is not yet 100 percent and they don’t last very long,” Marenda said.
Excessive rain, as we have seen in recent weeks, can also be damaging, he said.
“If there is too little water, the truffle will not grow. If there is too much water, it will rot.”
Alarmed by Buk, Marenda crouched on the ground to carefully scratch the earth with a narrow shovel and extract a truffle, albeit of modest size.
As to whether the white truffle is on the brink of extinction, experts say it is not too late.
“Not yet. But if we don’t do anything, it could become that way,” says Mario Aprile, president of the Piedmontese truffle hunters’ association.
“The white truffle cannot be cultivated, unlike the black one. Without trees there are no truffles. We plant them to rebuild biodiversity,” Aprile said.
Faced with limited supply and growing demand, the white truffle is traded at a high price and this year at the International Alba White Truffle Fair, which ends on December 8, it reaches a price of 4,500 euros per kilo.
Two “twin” white truffles, tied to the same root and unearthed by Aprile, were the stars of the annual global white truffle charity auction in Alba on Sunday.
With a total weight of 905 grams, the fungi were sold for 140,000 euros ($150,000) to a Hong Kong financial magnate.
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