It was France’s first national truffle fete and the crowds were acting a bit like the wild boar that like to root the luxury fungus out of the soil.
As if drawn by the distinctive smell of ”tuber melanosporum” wafting from the small market-hall, the crowd pushed and shoved and elbowed, and as soon as the bell was rung to signal buying could begin, there was a mighty surge forward. Even the minister of agriculture, who had come specially from Paris, was caught in the swell.
Betsy Bernardaud, an American married to a Frenchman, was one of the first to make it to the front stalls and came away waving two small bags of the small, dark, dirty-looking truffle. ”How do you choose them?” she said, ”by the smell, the feel, the aspect. It’s all experience.”
People came by the hundreds to this village of 260 people perched on a hill in southwest France not far from the porcelain city of Limoges, and by lunchtime all 50 kilogrammes of truffles on offer were gone — against 30 000-odd euros.
One of the world’s most expensive foods, the current price for ”tuber melanosporum”, the top truffle variety, hovers around 600 euros a kilogramme — which explains why it is known as ”the black diamond”.
Jean-Baptiste Champagnac, an 80-year-old farmer with few of his original teeth, recounted how in the old days, when there were more truffles around, his grandfather bought a six-shot revolver for market-days, when he came home pockets stuffed with bills from the truffles.
The wild mushroom brought prosperity to French farmers in those days, said Raoul Mas, mayor of Chartrier-Ferriere. ”The saying was ‘one harvest, one barn’, and if you look around here, most of the old stone homes were built thanks to the cash earned from truffles,” he said.
Champagnac’s grandfather had so many that he used two pigs to search his land for the black diamonds below ground. People nowadays prefer to work dogs, easier to handle than heavy sows maddened by truffle scent.
Surrounded by lots of old men in berets, truffle-hunter — ”caveur” in French — Robert Lachaize was showing off the skills of Lola, ”a natural truffle hound like you’ve never seen who only took three days to train.”
A cross between a basset and a beagle, Lola took off, snout to the ground and tail up and within seconds stopped to scratch the soil by the oak trees that favour the growth of the fungus. Lachaize dug around a little and pulled out a mushroom. ”See!” he said.
Meanwhile Betsy from Detroit was focussing on truffle taste rather than whereabouts. ”Truffles”, she told Frenchman Philippe Castanet as she feasted on the local speciality, scrambled eggs with truffle, ”are wonderful with spaghetti.”
Castanet, a retired aerospace engineer and owner of a truffle-studded property nearby, offered his own favourite recipe as a trade-off — a complicated brew involving sliced shallots in duck fat, truffles, thick cream and eggs.
Like many of the people at the fete, Castanet looked like something out of a Halloween or Harry Potter film — draped in a long green-lined black satin cape with a broad-brimmed hat. Others were in yellow satin with big floppy berets shaped like mushrooms, one man was wearing a pink cape with huge black spots. All were members of France’s legendary culinary ”confrereries” or ”brotherhoods”, a gourmet tradition of protecting local delicacies that could only exist in this food-enamoured country. They came in dozens from across France, carrying banners and parading up and down the village.
Castanet’s group was called the ”Brotherhood of the Truffle, Tuber Melanosporum” after the local ”black diamond” variety. Others had travelled from eastern Lorraine, Touraine to the north or southern Provence, which boast other truffle varieties.
In the evening they sat down to a banquet of 300 diners that began with a truffle-scented aperitif and dates stuffed with foie-gras and which offered six courses, all including truffles, even the cheese.
”This fete”, said organiser and local politician Jean-Pierre Francy, ”is aimed at reviving the popularity of the truffle and boosting truffle farming”.
Chartrier-Ferriere was selected to host this first high gathering of truffle-ites because the first of France’s three experimental truffle centres was set up there some 25 years ago, on chalky soils favourable to the fungus.
Though no-one has exact figures, French truffle production is said to have plummeted from 2 000 tons a century ago to 20 tons today, a ton of which is produced in this region of Correze. The fall was due to wars, to the rural exodus and to farming reform. So for now France imports two-thirds of its truffles from Italy and Spain.
But it takes between 10 to 25 years for the first truffles to pop up near the roots of newly-planted oak and hazel trees that host the fungus.
”Truffle farming is a long process and there are no guarantees,” said Albert Verlhac, who runs the centre. ”Only 30% of the trees produce mushrooms.” And traders complain that apart from the great chefs, the French buy less and less truffles, largely because of the price.
”Which is ridiculous when you think about it,” said Mas the village mayor. ”Take pepper which is twice as expensive per kilo or saffron at about 3 000 euros a kilogramme, and compare.
”You only need a few grams of truffle, you know, to entirely change the flavour of a dish.” – Sapa-AFP