We write the things that aren't news

Oct. 11, 2026 (Sun.)

Food & DrinkOct. 11, 2026

In Alba, Owning the Forest Doesn't Get You Its Truffles

Italian law opens wild truffle ground to anyone with a license and a dog. It is also why Piedmont's hunters go out at night.

한국어판 →

In Three Lines

Alba's white truffle fair opened yesterday. Its truffles still come mostly from the forest, found by people walking dogs.
Italian law makes truffle gathering free in woods and on uncultivated land. An owner who wants to keep others out must get the ground certified and ring it with signs.
The law never names the pig. It simply requires a trained dog.

The 96th International White Truffle Fair opened yesterday in Alba, a small town in Italy's northwestern Piedmont region. Every weekend until Dec. 6, truffle sellers will set up in the Cortile della Maddalena, a courtyard in the old town.

Say "truffle" and most of us picture a pig snuffling through the leaves. The image is fair enough. Farmers in France and Italy once hunted truffles with pigs. Today even the Périgord, in southwestern France, has only a handful of hunters left who work with a sow.

In Italy, what you hunt with is a matter of law. Yet its 1985 truffle law never uses the word "pig." What it names is the dog: anyone searching for truffles must bring a trained one, and may dig only where the dog started, using a small spade. People digging on their own land are exempt.

Truffles return to the same spot

To see why, start with what a truffle is. It is the fruit of a fungus that lives underground, wrapped around the roots of trees such as oak, poplar and willow and trading nutrients with them.

The lump on the plate is only the fruit. The fungus itself is a web of threads spread through the soil, so truffles appear in the same places at roughly the same time each year. The law bans plowing up the ground during the gathering season and requires hunters to refill their holes. Piedmont's own statute adds an instruction of its own: search in ways that do not damage truffle ground.

A pig is bad at following those rules. It wants to eat what it finds, and it roots up a wide patch with its snout. A dog is far less tempted. It starts scratching, and a person finishes with a small spade.

Anyone who fishes knows a place like that. Nobody owns the sea, yet the spot where the fish bite is there every year, and the people who know it rarely share it.

In the woods, anyone may dig

A forest, unlike the sea, has an owner. Common sense says the truffles in it belong to that owner. It is a tidy assumption. Italian law disagrees. Gathering is free in woods and on uncultivated land, and anyone who passes the licensing exam may dig on someone else's property.

An owner can close the ground, but owning the trees is not enough. The land has to be certified as a managed truffle ground, improved by planting more truffle-bearing trees. Then come the signs reading "Truffle gathering reserved," posted at least 2.5 meters (about 8 feet) off the ground along the boundary, each within sight of the next.

Piedmont leans the other way, toward keeping the woods open. Its law provides for payments to landowners, tree by tree, for keeping truffle-bearing trees standing while letting others gather freely beneath them.

Once the forest is open, the name on the deed matters little. A hunter's only real asset is knowing which tree, and when.

White truffles barely grow on farms yet

One more fact raises the value of that knowledge. White truffles have proved extremely hard to farm. Black truffles are another matter: in France, 90% of them come from orchards planted with seedlings inoculated with the fungus.

The first attempts to cultivate white truffles began in the 1970s and failed. In 2019, a French orchard planted with seedlings developed by INRAE, France's national agricultural research institute, and the Robin nursery produced white truffles. It was the first orchard outside the species' natural range to do so, yielding three that year and four the next. In July 2022 the researchers reported 26 truffles from 12 of the orchard's 52 trees, weighing 900 grams in all.

900 g

Total weight of the 26 white truffles from one French test orchard, reported in July 2022

That is less than a kilo from one test orchard in a year. The white truffles on the market still come mostly from the wild, and each year's supply depends on each year's weather. This summer's heat and a long drought left the early season short and the truffles small. On Oct. 9 the Bologna daily il Resto del Carlino quoted the head of a truffle hunters' association in the Marche region. Until it rains, he said, the dogs cannot pick up the scent and few truffles turn up.

Prices started high. In early October, the Turin daily La Stampa reported Alba shop prices reaching 350 to 500 euros per 100 grams. The same Carlino article put Alba at 2,000 euros a kilo and up, reaching 4,500 to 5,000 for the best pieces. In it, the head of a truffle company in Acqualagna, in the Marche, put a plate of white-truffle tagliatelle at 40 to 50 euros. The 10 grams of truffle shaved over it account for 25 of that. When supply shrinks, every spot where a dog stops is worth more.

Piedmont's hunters go out at night

The more a spot is worth, the more reason to keep it hidden. Italy's national law bans gathering at night, from an hour after sunset to an hour before dawn. It also lets regions set other rules where local custom calls for them. Piedmont took that opening. Its statute says truffles may be searched for and gathered at night.

An old man and his dog in a dark forest sounds romantic. The hunters' own explanation is practical. One trifolau, as truffle hunters are called in Piedmontese dialect, has hunted around Alba for 64 years. He told a reporter he goes out every night in white truffle season. In the dark, he said, the dogs are less distracted and rivals have a harder time following him.

"We have secret spots we don't want anyone else to know about."

The rivalry sometimes turns criminal. In the fall of 2022, Italy's forestry police sent poison-detection dogs through truffle and hunting grounds between Piedmont and Liguria. The EU wolf-conservation project that reported the operation listed rivalry among truffle hunters as one reason poisoned bait gets laid.

An angler who cannot own the sea hides the spot where the fish bite. A trifolau who cannot own the forest does the same. He goes out at night and fills his holes. Only one person knows where the spot is.

Sources

이 블로그 검색

Daily Woody