Truffle trouble ruffles fungi market

PERIGUEUX, France, Aug. 28 (UPI) -- The heat wave that hung over France during August -- causing the deaths of as many as 10,000 people -- has also dealt a severe blow to this year's truffle trade.

The truffle is known as "the black diamond of Périgord," the hilly, wooded region of the Dordogne province in South West France. In good years, a kilogram of these gnarled subterranean lumps will fetch around $4,000. But to mature, it is essential that the month of August is humid and stormy. Ancient French "trufflers," their fingers thick skinned and cracked with seams of black from the years of rubbing earth from their finds, will tell you, "C'est le mois d'août qui fait la truffe" - "It's the month of August that makes the truffle."

Not this year. Temperatures have been consistently in the 90-110 degree bracket. Storms have rattled noisily about the chestnut hills but have seldom broken.

Only a century ago, hundreds of tons of truffles were collected. These days, the Dordogne only manages around four. Which goes a long way towards explaining their price. This year, when the truffle markets begin to take place in January as the tubers reach maturity, it is expected that truffles, weighing roughly 3.5 ounces apiece, will sell as high as $10,000 a kilo. This will naturally be reflected in the cost of your Petit Soufflé aux Truffes Noires, or whatever other exotic tuber-scented dish is on offer on your local three star restaurant menu.

Truffles develop in chalky ground at an altitude between 100 and 1,000 meters. They are found below the soil at a depth of 5 to 30 centimeters. It can take up to 10 years of working and tending a cultivated tree - one whose roots have been deliberately infected with truffle spores - before the first truffle is harvested. So for those trees in the wild that experienced trufflers suspect will yield these black diamonds, truffle hunting can arouse the worst of emotions.

A passionate turf war is fought over these precious tubers -- and not just among those individual foragers whose livelihood depends upon never revealing to their competitors their secret sources in the forests. These truffle hunters disappear among the pre-dawn mists with their specially trained (and so beyond price) dogs or pigs - or just simply their eyes and experience - to tiptoe among the roots of the oak trees that are the most generous source.

The rivalry runs between nations. The French swear by Tuber melanosporum, the black truffle of the Périgord. The Italians insist that nothing but their own white truffle of the Piedmont, Tuber magnatum, has any merit. While the latter has a distinctive peppery flavor, the French tuber has none. It is revered instead for its extraordinary scent, which permeates everything it comes in contact with.

Both nations are united, however, in their concern over a new threat to the truffle market - from China. It is being infiltrated by imitation, and consequently tasteless, Chinese truffles, sold at vastly reduced prices.

The venerated tuber generates so much interest it even has its own museum, La Maison de la Truffe, in the Périgord village of Sorges. Here you can learn everything you want to know about them - except where to dig them up.

And Sainte Alvère, between the provincial capital of Périgueux and the wine-making town of Bergerac, claims to have been the first town to create a site on the internet exclusively devoted to truffles, their background, history and purchase.

Ironically, what makes terrible conditions for the truffle produces an excellent wine harvest, and local vineyard owners are anticipating a vintage year.