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Trouble in Truffle Land
Article by Steven Uriarte
Photography by Stéphane Herbert
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Truffle growers
and gatherers in southwestern France face the dual pressures of dwindling
natural supply and insatiable international demand. Can their traditional
way of life continue to survive in Périgord?
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More Fun Facts
about Truffles
Learn about the truffle's aphrodisiac effects... Why it grows
near certain trees... Truffles in history... Truffles around
the world...
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"Ou est elle? Ou est elle? Cherche
la truffe!" Bernard Glaudon prompts his sniffer dog, Hut, to
scour the chalky earth. "Where is it? Where is it? Find the
truffle!"
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Bernard Glaudon's truffle
hound, Hut, is well-trained to use all his instincts in the
search for the "Black Diamond." Glaudon follows his
dog step by step, relying on Hut's intuition in the "hot
zone" near the oaks roots.
© Stéphane Herbert |
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I follow Glaudon and the black-and-white
fox terrier down a muddy path winding through random rows of scrubby
oaks about half a century old. We've entered a traditional truffière,
or truffle plantation. It is midafternoon. A warm sun penetrates
the late-December chill. The air smells of wood smoke, which curls
up, not far away, from the chimneys of ancient farmhouses built
of stone quarried from outlying hills.
Wedged between Southwestern France's Vézère
Valley and Dordogne River, Périgord is a land of medieval
castles, Cro-Magnon grottoes, pastures dotted with sheep and geese,
and forested mountains with craggy cliffs. It is a scene that could
come from the palette of Cézanne. It is also one of the last
native strongholds of the wild black truffle (Tuber Melanosporum).
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Some 200 species of tubers exist, from
the desert truffle (Terfezia sp. of the Middle East and North Africa)
to the oft-despised Chinese truffle (Tuber indicum) to Italy's prized
Piedmont white (Tuber magnatum). But the species that holds a place
in gastronomy alongside saffron, caviar, and the finest of wines
-- one that French gourmet Brillat-Savarin christened the "black
diamond of the kitchen" -- is from Périgord.
I have arrived at the peak of the harvest
season, which lasts from late autumn to early spring. In the wake
of a storm that has ravaged the region, cutting off residents' electric
power for days and uprooting millions of trees, I am lucky that
Glaudon can make time to show me how he finds truffles. Descended
from generations of rugged, tireless Périgordian farmers
who have eked out a living from the rocky soil, he is fiercely independent
yet warm and friendly. He shrugs off the fact that the roofs of
his farmhouse and barn have partially blown away.
Like most trufficulteurs, Glaudon owns
several hectares of land. His plantation lies just outside the village
of Nadaillac, where he is also president of the local association
of truffle cultivators. "I've been around truffles all my life,"
he says. "From about the age of five, I accompanied my grandmother
harvesting truffles, always with a pig." Glendon has since
modernized his methods, but with the help of Hut, he still spends
six months a year digging his way to a comfortable revenue.
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(Above) The last
sunbeams on Castelnaud's castle. (Below) The enigmatic
mushroom, tuber mélanosporum, more commonly known as
the "Black Diamond" of Périgord is the truffle
most appreciated in the world for its savours and aphrodisiac
effects.
© Stéphane Herbert |
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At first glance, one couldn't imagine a
more peaceable occupation. All it takes is a basket, wooden stick,
well-trained dog, and gatherer -- also well trained. Finding truffles
is not unlike a treasure hunt. The fungi set up home 5 to 30 centimetres
underground, causing the surface above them to rise, a phenomenon
the ancients identified in Latin as terrae tuffolae, hence the modern
name, Other clues that truffles are underfoot include cracks in
the earth; the coming and going of ants and flies; tracks and feces
of mice, rats, voles, and other rodents fond of fungi; and above
all, scorched earth: the nearly total absence of vegetation on the
ground's surface.
Today, however, the need to search for
terrae tuffolae is vanishing, along with both natural and traditional.
truffières themselves. Dominique Delage of the Truffle Museum
in nearby Sorges states that many wild truffières, which
are now found on national or municipal lands in southern France,
have been designated as domanial forests. These are regularly maintained
-- for peak truffle production, the ground must be regularly cleared
of debris so that the sun can nurture the developing rootlets where
the fungi grow -- but many other truffières, sad to say,
have been abandoned.
Moreover, wild truffles "are becoming
scarcer because of the constant deterioration of the environment,"
says Paul Bonnet, a third-generation trufficulteur and president
of the Université de la Truffe in Carpentras in southeastern
France. This degradation is largely the consequence of the deforestation
of oak stands through land developments and air pollution, plus
the aerial spraying of pesticides over vineyards and orchards. Also
to blame for France's decline in truffle production -- from an annual
average of 1,000 tonnes to 50 tonnes in the past 100 years -- are
overharvesting and the movement of rural populations to cities.
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(Above) With
young men like Xavier who already know how to recognize the
unique flavor of a good "mélano" truffle from
Périgord, the next generation of connaisseurs is assured.
(Below) Jaques Guinberteau of the National Insititute
of Agronomy in Bordeaux-Aquitaine observes a characteristic
aspect of the truffle mélanosporum under a microscope.
© Stéphane Herbert |
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Predictably, while the truffle
supply is shrinking, demand is exploding. The struggle is on full
force to meet the world's hunger for the fungi through nontraditional
methods of production. Indeed, hapless scientists have tried for
centuries to grow truffles artificially. Apart from a few intermittent
successessuch as the hit-and-miss method of planting young trees
next to natural truffières to coax the colonizer fungi out
of the wild -- all efforts have failed.
Even modern experimental avenues
involving bioengineering have shown mixed results. Despite current
technological leaps, attempts to produce black truffles through
cloning have yet to yield much more than slime (albeit with all
the right DNA markers) in Petri dishes. Two former University of
California biologists, Moshe Shifrine and Randy Dorian, have attempted
to market products derived from these laboratory-grown truffles,
including paste concentrate and scented oil, but the French have
turned up their noses at them.
By far the most promising trend
in artificial production is trufficulture. About 25 years ago, mycologist
Gérard Chevalier and his colleagues at France's National
Institute of Agronomic Research in Clermont-Ferrand devised a practical
method to "mycologist" the roots of seedlings to cultivate
truffles.
The exact technique is a well-guarded
secret. It entails the careful selection of seeds (hazelnuts and
acorns) from existing truffières and their germination under
tight controls that prevent infection from competing fungi. Laboratory
technicians infuse the developing rootlets in a "porridge"
of truffle spores to activate a symbiotic union between seedlings
and fungi. The high pH level required to promote this association
produces seedlings that appear stunted in comparison with other
young trees. The resulting mycorrhize" seedlings can be planted
within eight months.
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So successful is this revolutionary technology
that it is taking agriculture by storm all over the world. The dilemma
for trufficulteurs like Glaudon is to reconcile biotechnology with
time-honoured ways. In today's competitive market, it's sink or
surrender to science. Not only have many farmers yielded to trufficulture,
they have even welcomed it. Untold hectares of land have been cultivated
with financial and technical assistance from the regional agriculture
department.
Glaudon, for one, is so enthused that he
is conducting experiments, including a study to compare trees with
mycorrhized roots with an untreated group of trees. If his hypothesis
proves correct, colonizing hyphae (hair-thin filaments emitted by
mycorrhizae) will spread the infection from treated to untreated
plants underground.
By way of explanation, Glaudon leads me
through the haphazard scattering of misshapen oaks in the traditional
truffière and into a recently planted plot of saplings arranged
in perfect rows. He describes the elaborate process of choosing
a site (north-south slopes are preferred), analyzing the earth (ideally
limestone-rich, alkaline soil), selecting trees (green oaks and
hazels are most productive), and planting seedlings whose roots
have been mycorrhized with truffle spores.
"In 5 to 10 years," says Glaudon,
"the trees we've planted here will come into production. Even
if our harvests are poorer than expected, production will exceed
what it is today." While he waits patiently for tree and fungus
to fall in love, he tills, weeds, and irrigates the rocky soil between
rows of pubescent hazels and oaks. The first signs of romance, in
the form of scorched earth, have yet to show.
"You don't plant to become an instant
millionaire," says Glaudon, "and there's no guarantee
that you'll get results." Trufficulture is a long-term investment
with many risks, including forest fires, droughts, tumultuous storms,
and destruction of trees and truffles by a wide range of pests,
from slugs and snails to rabbits and boars.
But once a plantation is established, the
financial rewards are significant. Arguably the most celebrated
-- and most expensive -- of all vegetables, the black truffle can
cost up to $1,000 a kilogram. Its exorbitant cost results from a
seductive blend of scarcity, delicate upbringing, the mysterious
way in which it grows, the challenges of getting it out of the ground,
and its celestial fragrance and taste. Prices vary, depending on
how large and intact each truffle is; on subtler features such as
darkness of hue, firmness of touch, and potency of fragrance; and
on market forces. Goods damaged by pests such as rodents and fly
larvae are bought at a bargain by commercial conservers who render
the scraps into expensive oils, extracts, and powders.
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Glaudon sells the fruits of his labours
locally, in Terrasson, and farther afield, in Périgueux,
the world's most important truffle market. Some truffles are ordered
straight from Glaudon's farm and may surface in Parisian millionaires'
markets or on the plates of connoisseurs in haute cuisine eateries
around the world.
Along with the black truffle's growing
prestige, a cutthroat market is emerging among trufficulteurs, some
of whom stoop to mixing much cheaper varieties, such as Chinese
and brumale, with black truffles to guarantee an unbeatable price.
The dark side of the business extends to conflicts among competing
truffle hunters, which has led to the poisoning of some sniffer
dogs. A pooch with a nose for tracking truffles is irreplaceable,
and a little strychnine can put dog and master out of action.
With Hut safe at our heels, we return from
the truffière to Glaudon's farmhouse, where the sun beams
brightly through his kitchen window. It casts a warm glow over his
dexterous hands as he cleans the day's harvest. He soaks the truffles
in water to loosen the dirt, then scrubs them meticulously with
a toothbrush and cuts off any damaged parts. Before long, the musky
aroma of the freshly cleaned truffles permeates the room.
"This one will fetch a good price,"
says Glaudon, brandishing a particularly firm, shapely truffle the
size of a plum. He hands me a darker specimen smelling vaguely of
turnip and garlic. "That one's worth much less." He identifies
it as Tuber brumale, vastly inferior in taste and aroma to the coveted
Tuber melanosporum. Glaudon holds one chestnut-sized nugget under
his nose and inhales deeply Then he passes it to me. I expect to
be ravished by its perfume. Instead, it smells subtly of forest
undergrowth, moist earth, root vegetables, oven-baked fruits. Only
as it lingers in the nostrils does its sensual scent reveal itself.
Glaudon watches in amusement as I lose
myself in the moment of breathing in the fragrance. "I don't
think we've developed a method of production that achieves the perfume
of the wild truffle," he remarks. "Truffles growing on
young, cultivated trees don't have the same aroma as those on old
trees. In 50 years, the trees we've planted may produce truffles
like the ones in the past."
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(Above) Market
day in Sarlat. (Below) The Black truffle of Périgord
sells for 7,850 Francs a kilo at the famous Maison de la Truffe
Dégustation on place de la Madeleine in Paris.
©
Stéphane Herbert |
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If this is what domesticated truffles smell
like, I can hardly wait to try the untamed ones. Luckily, Glaudon's
friend and neighbour Odette Combesque has invited me to join her
and her dog Farotte (incidentally, Hut's half-sister) to gather
truffles on her own tract of land. At the appointed time, she appears
through the scrub willows, brambles, and gnarly oaks of her wild
truffière.
Combesque walks with her back as straight
as a pillar and the poise of someone who is right where she belongs.
I cannot believe she is 70 years old. Unabashedly in love with her
corner of the world, she is a traditional truffle hunter, or rabassière,
in the local patois.
"I'm not well informed about modern
methods," she says. "Not like Monsieur Glaudon. He's much
younger than me. For him, it's work. He spends all his time at it.
But," she adds with a worldly smile, "Monsieur Glaudon
doesn't know what I know. Me, I know ancestral methods."
We wend our way through a shrubby woods
in a shallow valley between soft hills. "In the past,"
says Combesque, "we scarcely did anything to cultivate truffles.
They just grew by themselves. We didn't work the land. We believed
that it should be left alone. At most, we'd take tree seedlings
from one site and plant them at another. The roots were mycorrhized
naturally."
In apparent agreement with her laissez-faire
attitude, Farotte bolts about with the loopy abandon of a house
dog set loose in the bush. She soon catches wind of the aroma, snuffling
around the base of an oak tree. just then, she starts burrowing
in a fever. Combesque pulls the dog aside and takes over, digging
the spot as gingerly as an archaeologist unearthing a fossil. At
last, she coaxes the prize -- roundish, brown, and dirty -- out
of the ground with a wooden stick. She sets it like a jewel on a
cushion of moss in her wicker basket. No sooner has she done so
than Farotte begins pawing her pocket, begging for a biscuit within.
The dog is well rewarded for her efforts, with hugs and kisses thrown
in for good measure. "Tu es mon bébé" Combesque
warbles. "Tu es mon amour".
Things weren't always so simple. "When
my mother taught me how to harvest truffles in these hills, we always
used a pig," says Combesque. Like Glaudon, she has long forsworn
this quaint custom for purely practical reasons -- it's easier to
reward a lap dog with a treat than it is to wrestle a huge sow away
from a truffle she has just sniffed out. Not that using a pig is
unheard-of today, but the practice is generally limited to commercial
"truffle safaris" staged for tourists.
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(Above) Odette
Combesque prepares her foie gras à la truffe accompanied
by confit de canard, one of the best regional specialties.
(Below) Feuilleté à la truffe by chef
Pierre Core of the Auberge de la Truffe in the village of
Sorges.
© Stéphane Herbert |
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The sun is setting as Combesque
finishes filling her basket. It is dinnertime, and we make our way
to her night-shrouded house. There, the warm glow of embers in a
huge stone hearth is a welcome comfort, for the electric power has
not yet returned. After lighting some candles and stoking the fire,
Combesque begins cracking farm-fresh eggs.
She explains the phenomenon
described by the French verb truffer -- to communicate the tuber's
taste and aroma to food. She has already done so by placing fresh
truffles in a closed container with the eggs, whose porous shells
let the essence through. An extravagant amount of finely chopped
truffle, along with garlic, salt, and pepper, beaten in with the
whites and yolks aids communication.
"Of course, I prefer truffles
fresh from the ground," says Combesque. Frozen are nothing
to sneeze at, but canned -- they've had the heart and soul boiled
out of them. The best way to serve truffles, she affirms, is at
their simplest.
As the omelette cooks over a
propane stove, a divine and slightly dubious scent, like anything
that smells dangerously good, pervades the kitchen. I suddenly realize
how hungry I've become foraging for truffles in the fresh mountain
air.
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We sit down to eat in the dining room by
a now roaring fire. With each dish, I discover another dimension
of the versatile fungus. We gorge on green salad tossed with shaved
truffles and a vinaigrette imbued with a heady dose of the tuber.
Buttered pasta crowned with sliced truffles ensues. Then the omelette
itself, surrounded by truffle peelings to allow the pure pleasure
of crunching the world's most expensive vegetable raw.
Such a meal in a restaurant would cost
a fortune. But then, French gastronomes have long insisted that
truffles should be devoured in prodigious amounts for their flavour
to be fully appreciated. "If I can't have too many truffles,
I'll do without truffles," said Colette, the early-20th-century
French novelist, proclaiming that they should be eaten like potatoes.
Along with a feast worthy of a gourmand,
Combesque brings me a deeper insight. In essence, truffles aren't
about money but about sheer indulgence. Their flavour -- call it
woodsy, mysterious, a mixture of mushrooms, cocoa, and herbs --
is like nothing else in God's creation. Renowned cookbook author
Paula Wolfert describes it as "the taste of the earth,"
adding that there is "a ripeness, a naughtiness, something
beyond description" in its flavour. Once experienced, it cannot
be forgotten. By the end of this fungal saturnalia, I swear the
wine and dessert have been laced with the tuber, too.
Legendary connoisseur André Simon
called truffles "not vegetables but miracles." But as
natural truffières are ploughed and paved over in favour
of plantations and urbanization, the truffle could lose its wildness,
its mystery, its authenticity -- the very stuff upon which its legendary
powers are based. If poetry and progress can still coexist in the
rugged landscape of southern France despite the ongoing conflict
between science and tradition, then perhaps truffles are miracles
after all.
Outside Combesque's kitchen, the soft glow
of candlelight spills over the leaf-littered ground. No storm can
dampen the ancient human spirit that is nurtured in Périgordian
soil. This spirit reveals itself in the self-reliance and hope that
I encountered in Bernard Glaudon and in the warmth and culinary
flair of Odette Combesque. Like the wild mountain truffle, it is
something that cannot be fully fathomed or tamed.
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