To whet the palate: Exceptional Dining with Luxury Gold

Where do truffles grow?

One reason truffles are so expensive is that they don’t grow in every part of the world. Historically speaking, truffles were largely only found naturally in European countries like Italy, France, Spain and Slovenia. In recent years, some other countries in North America, South America and Asia have successfully started growing their own.  

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How do truffles grow?

Truffles grow beneath trees in a symbiotic relationship by attaching their spores to the tree roots. The transfer of nutrients enables them both to grow. Most truffles grow beneath specific tree species, including hazelnut and poplar, which influence their taste and scent. 

Why are truffles expensive?

Truffles are expensive because they’re so rare to harvest. Grown naturally only in a few European countries, truffle hunting is a centuries-old practice in which truffle hunters rarely share their hunting grounds with anyone else. The most expensive truffles are white truffles found in Italy’s Piedmont region. The International Alba White Truffle Fair is the preeminent truffle fair where you’ll find the largest, most expensive truffles for sale.

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Where can I hunt for truffles with truffle hunters? 

Luxury Gold’s Croatia & the Dalmatian Coast tour is a two week itinerary filled with unforgettable activities, including hunting for truffles with a local farmer in Istria. You can also hunt for truffles on our Ultimate Italy tour in Florence. Keep in mind that the best time to harvest white truffles is typically between September and November, though peak season may alter based on the summer season’s temperatures, spring’s rainfall, and if the holes where the prior year’s truffles were found were filled properly. Black truffle harvest is between April and October in some areas like Slovenia, and their bounty is also impacted by seasonal climate fluctuations.

Read more about truffle hunting: A day in the life of one of Croatia’s top truffle hunters

Where can I taste a truffle?

Although only found in select countries, you can taste truffles at restaurants across the world. Casa di Langa, a hotel just outside of Alba, Italy, has a restaurant with a case of fresh truffles you can choose from. Restaurant Zigante in Livade, Croatia, is another fantastic dining destination where truffles are blended in delicious ways, including in truffle ice cream.

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Italy

Italy is the epicenter for truffles. When the most expensive truffles are up for auction, it’s likely that they were found in the Italian countryside. Truffle hunters stay silent about where they find these fungi in Le Marche, Tuscany, Piedmont, and Umbria, but the restaurants in these regions aren’t shy about featuring them in both fine and rustic dishes. 

Truffle hunting on the Ultimate Italy tour is the ultimate way to find and taste fresh Italian truffles.

Croatia

Italy may stay in the limelight for having the most expensive truffles, but Croatia’s Istria region has a bounty of its own worthy of your attention. The truffle capital of Croatia wasn’t lauded as such pre-1999, until a hunter and his dog dug up what became the largest white truffle in the world. Now, the Istrian Peninsula is regarded as a popular destination for truffle hunting and sampling.

Get off the beaten path and uncover gems like fresh truffles on the Croatia & the Dalmatian Coast tour.

Spain

The majority of Spain’s truffles are black truffles and its black winter truffles are especially popular, but that wasn’t always the case. In fact, it was until the mid-1900s that truffle hunters from France started seeking out the black diamond truffles they knew in the hills of Spain. When Spanish farmers realized how valuable these truffles were, they seized the opportunity and have since become the world’s largest producer of black winter truffles. 

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France 

It should be no surprise that anything grown in French soil is delectable; that includes truffles. France produces nearly one-third of the world’s truffles. The “black diamond” is a popular truffle found in Provence and Southwest France. Also known as the Périgord truffle, black diamond truffles are known for their strong scent and distinctive taste.

Sample truffle-infused dishes as you explore the French countryside on our Ultimate Southern France tour.  

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Slovenia

Slovenia shares a small piece of the Istrian Peninsula with Croatia. With Italy as its adjacent neighbor, one shouldn’t be shocked to learn that Slovenia is an underrated destination for truffle hunting and dining. One of the unique experiences you can have in Slovenia that you seldom can elsewhere is hunting for the rare spring white bianchetti truffle which is harvested around March each year. 

With Exceptional Dining a hallmark of every Luxury Gold journey, see how you can enjoy a truffle-infused vacation, or other gastronomical pleasures with our worldwide collection of luxury tours.

Did you know “truffle hunter” was a career choice? Not only is it a real job, but it involves leading a pack of extremely cute dogs on daily walks, in search of natural treasure. It’s a fascinating world to get a peek into, and you can do just that in Istria, a peninsula in northern Croatia. 

On Luxury Gold’s Croatia and the Dalmatian Coast journey, one of our luxury Croatia holidays, you’ll visit an established truffle farm, Prodan Tartufi; a small family operation, it’s been run by three generations of the Prodan family since the 1960s. Here, expert truffle hunter Visnja Prodan Jekić talks us through her typical day in the forests and farmland of Buzet, Croatia.

A good canine team is everything

It’s a myth that only one species of dog is fit to work in truffle hunting, says Visnja, though some do have it more in their blood than others. “We have a couple of terrier-mix dogs who we have trained from being very young puppies, and they are excellent ‒ the key is training them from very young,” she explains.

“We also have a Portuguese Water Dog ‒ this breed has hunting and retrieving in their DNA, but they are quite stubborn and alpha. They want to be the best on the team. Ours, Capo, is very young and doesn’t work well with others at the moment. When he’s older and calmer he’ll be able to work in a pair.” 

Dog training and relationship building is a huge part of Visnja and brother Mirko’s job ‒ they take one or two dogs out on every hunting mission.

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Training takes years

Visnja and the family spent years training their dog pack to be excellent truffle hunters. “We feed them with truffles when they are little, only a couple of months old, and they get to know the smell, to eat some and play with them,” she explains. “Then we eventually bury some so they learn to find their location and dig for them.” 

This means the dogs do get a taste for the truffles, however: “We have to be quick, back they never bark when they find one,” adds Visnja. “They just start digging, so we have to catch up and get to the truffle before them ‒ we take the truffle and give them a treat quickly, so they associate it with good work.” But no employee is perfect: many a dog has chomped through a very valuable truffle. 

You have to know where to look

Truffles tend to grow in certain locations in the forest; the most reliable corners of Prodan’s own land are a closely guarded family secret. “My grandfather was a very, very wise man. Everything we know about truffles, we learned from him,” says Visnja. “He started finding truffles in the 1960s, and taught my mum and her sisters everything there was to know about truffles, agriculture and wine.” As such, she’ll never reveal her truffle hot spots, keeping them a close secret between herself, her brother and the dogs. 

“If anyone found out where we find them, they could trespass and go looking for them,” she explains. However, new locations are found all the time ‒ in fact, animals help in spreading the truffles across woodland by eating them and depositing the spores around new tree roots. 

Try local truffles on Luxury Gold’s 12-day Ultimate Italy journey.

It’s an unpredictable pursuit

People think that this outdoorsy, dog-friendly role is the dream job, says Visnja, but really it can be long, unpredictable and frustrating. Everything from weather conditions to the dogs’ mood can affect their success rate. “If you’re not patient, it’s simply not a job for you,” she says. “Some people think they can just train a dog and go and find truffles, but there are so many hours spent walking in the woods and not finding anything.” 

She goes out for truffles all year round, though tourists most often visit for tours in spring and autumn. Summer can be a hindrance: “If it’s too hot, the dogs don’t tend to find anything; so we go early morning or late evening so they can smell better.” Their canine assistants are also quick to pick up on humans’ moods. “If you’re anxious or stressed, they can sense that and they refuse to do anything ‒ so you have to be incredibly calm.”

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Gastronomic knowledge plays a part

Away from the hunt, truffle hunters need to know the types of truffle they’re dealing with, their value and how quickly they should be used. “You have to pretty much sell them as you get them ‒ they get less flavourful and eventually rot. If you freeze them, the flavour gets lost, so it’s best to preserve them in oil,” explains Visnja. Prodan sells to local Croatian restaurants as well as selling wholesale worldwide. On her tours, Visnja takes guests back to the farmhouse to try a range of truffle spreads, pestos and condiments, as well as scrambled egg with grated truffle and truffle-sprinkled ice cream. 

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You can strike gold ‒ or white

“Depending on the time of the year, truffle hunters search for different types: you have several black truffle sub-varieties: black summer, autumn and winter. In terms of white truffles, you have white winter and white spring types.” The white winter truffle is the most expensive type; they cannot be cultivated, unlike the black variety. 

Prices really vary, says Visnja: “A lower quantity in one season means the prices go higher; last year the wholesale price went up to more than 5,000 Euros per kilo.” The most expensive truffle ever sold was a 4.16-pound white truffle, which went for $61,250 at Sotheby’s.

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Meet a truffle hunter on Luxury Gold’s Croatia and the Dalmatian Coast tour.