Hunting for Truffles in Tuscany

These are not truffles, but this was the woods where we found them.

Google is a wonderful thing.  Or maybe it's a dangerous thing for my pocketbook...as it lets me act on a whim. The whole reason I needed to go to Tuscany in November (in addition of being in desperate need of hermit weekend) was that November is white truffle season. How did I know this? Google.

I was re-reading one of my favorite books "A Year in Provence" and came to the part when they went truffle hunting.  Now some people just read that part and think, "Mmmm...truffles are yummy." Me, I think, "Hmmm...I wonder when truffle season is?"

The truffle sniffing dog doing his thing

I google it and it turns out truffle season is apparently all year long, but the rare white truffle season is November. White truffles can go for $15,000 a kilogram. They are like tasty diamonds in the dirt -- so naturally, I decided those were the ones I should hunt for.

Keep in mind this was the first of November when I was doing researching this, and I already had committed to volunteering at a vineyard the second week of November (read blog entry) and was running the Las Vegas Ragnar one of the other weekends that month.  But the last weekend of November was free. Yay!!

Now all I had to find a truffle hunter in Tuscany who could take me out on a hunt.

HUNTING WITH THE TRUFFLE HUNTER

Surprisingly there aren't that many truffle hunters who do tours listed online. But all I needed was one - and the one that I found was www.trufflehunter.net.  The tour was fantastic and worth the $160 I paid to do it, as I got a full day that included shuttle service from Florence to the truffle farmhouse, truffle hunting, lunch and then Chianti tasting.

The van picked me and my friend up at 9am in Florence (when I told her about the truffle hunting, she couldn't say 'no' to the experience) and then drove us to the farm in San Minato. The woods where the truffles were located was about 90 minutes outside of Florence so it was nice to see a little of the countryside along the way.

Now in my "Year in Provence" book, they used a pig to find truffles, but this place had trained a dog to do it. They say the problem with using a pig is that the pig will eat the truffles if you aren't fast enough to snatch it away when the truffle is found. The dog can be trained to find it and will be happy with a dog treat.

The truffle dog was just a normal looking dog with a well-trained nose

You would think that the dog that they used would be some sort of fancy truffle hunting breed, but nope. The dog was a normal looking scruffy dog. He was super friendly and really seemed to love his job of leading our group of 8 people through the woods while he sniffed out truffles.

We followed him around the woods for about an hour.  In that time he found two truffles.  How it worked was that he would sniff them out and then dig a little to get to the edible treasure.  Frankly, I don't think I would be able to find any truffles without him.  Even when the Truffle Hunter showed us where it was in the ground, it was hard to distinguish what was a white truffle and what was a dead leaf.

That white thing beside the hoe is a white truffle

Also, truffles might be super expensive, but they do look a little bit like poop.

The white truffle cleaned off

After the hunt, they brought us back to the farmhouse where we had a three course meal that included soup with truffle oil drizzled on it, some sort of egg dish with truffles and a pasta with truffles in it (tagliolini al tartufo).  It was a nice way to see how to use the truffles in cooking.  Each course was also paired with wine to help bring out the flavor.

During the lunch, we also learned more about truffles -- like how to store them to keep them fresh. If you wanted, you buy some truffles to take home if interested.  You could also buy any of the wine that was served during lunch and the olive oil that they made on the farm.  It was all so amazingly delicious, and while the truffles were expensive (as they always are), the wine and the olive oil was relatively cheap.

I did pick up a bottle of the new olive oil that I mentioned in the blog before this (read it here) and was glad I did.  I haven't seen it anywhere else in Europe so far - and every time I use it, I think of this trip.

A box full of different sized truffles. They don't look tasty, but they are.

Then after we were all stuffed, it was time to visit a Chianti winemaker and learn about the grapes in the region. The guide explained everything we needed to know about the process of winemaking and, of course, this was followed by a tasting.

The Chianti winery

Again you could wine here and have it shipped back to the US if you wanted to take some home and not carry it with you.

It was amazing day of hunting, drinking and eating.