Ten years ago this winter we unearthed our very first truffle – a perfect specimen weighing in at 223 grams.

Today, as we prepare to enter another truffle season, the soil beneath our truffiere is heaving with black gold. As many as 100,000 individual truffles are expected to emerge from our orchard’s depths in 2021.

Each one of these many thousands of truffles takes six long months to mysteriously grow and ripen. And nobody knows how they do it.

Our 2021 truffles started their extraordinary underground gestation sometime last Spring – in a microscopic union invisible to the naked eye. By late December, they had grown enough to start pushing up the earth above them, creating tell-tale mounds and cracks on the soil surface that, each season, reassure us the truffles are in fact there.

At this point, we pick up our shovels and start the painstaking process of covering each little truffle mound with a dollop of sand to keep our fungal friends safe from pests and the sun’s hot rays. For months we walk up and down each row covering each truffle with tenderness as they expand towards the soil surface.

By mid-May the first of the truffles will be ready for harvest and their unique aroma will start to waft up the hill, stirring our faithful truffle dog Solly into action. His trained nose and mittened paws will hone in on each piece of black gold and when he finds his treasure he will sit patiently and await his reward before setting off on the hunt again.