August 2013

When a dog finds its first truffle — the fungus, not the chocolate candy — the sound you hear will most likely be the voice of a very excited dog handler. Read full article.

This is not a bad idea at all: a weekend devoted to truffles, including tastings at a picturesque villa, training sessions so that your dog can learn how to hunt for truffles, and a grand dinner. Read full article.

They said it couldn’t be done, but apparently they were wrong. What’s being called the Willamette Valley’s “first cultivated black truffle” has just been found near Corvallis in an orchard of inoculated hazelnut trees supplied by New World Trufflieres, Inc. The truffle is a Perigord variety or Tuber melanosporum, the same variety that is cultivated…

It began in the 1970s when phone calls kept coming in from France. Property offers from people Robin Peiffer didn’t know. By the third, curiosity got the better of him, “you’re the third person to call from France, why do you want to buy my land?” The answer of course, was wine. Read full article.

It’s hard to find a crop more valuable than truffles — prices can go as high as $2,000 per pound for ultra-rare white Alba truffles. The problem is that they grow underground, attached to the roots of trees. To find them, truffle hunters traditionally used pigs, whose natural instinct for rooting behavior helped hunters locate…