Family connections, a well-trained dog and the skill to find that prize ‘catch’ are some of the requirements for truffle-hunting, says Giulio Benuzzi.
Italian truffle expert Giulio Benuzzi, 54, not only tracks down delicious truffles in the woods around Florence, he shows tourists how to do it, too. Here, he tells us about private police and the dogs worth over Dh200,000.
How did you get into truffles, Giulio?
I used to be the manager of a famous restaurant in Milan, and when I left, I set up a B&B in Florence that had a focus on food. It was a great success and thanks to the internet I was attracting international food lovers who often seemed really interested in truffles. It set me thinking and I eventually decided to close the B&B and to turn my home into a place where I could welcome people interested in learning about them. But first I needed to learn how to become a truffle hunter.
How did you go about that?
It was very difficult. In Italy and France, truffle hunting exists in families and is a very closed-off thing; everything is passed from father to son. But my father was an engineer, so it was hard to find a family that would teach me.
Where did you find one?
It was a long search. Then one day I met a ranger captain and asked if he knew any truffle hunters; he asked me why and when I told him that I had a tourist project in mind and that I wanted to become a truffle hunter and look after international clients. He told me that it sounded like one of the most exciting projects he’d ever heard of. He gave me his business card and it turned out that he was the President of the Tuscany Truffle Association and also an important truffle hunter.
Did he take you on?
Yes. We became great friends. He said he would show me how to find truffles during a year of training on land about 50km south of Florence. It was great fun. Every morning they would take me into the forest, blindfolded, and then take it off when we were there.
They blindfolded you?
Oh yes. They didn’t want to show me the secret area where we would be hunting; these things are really well protected. The next step was to try and get a license, because in Italy you need the right paperwork to be an official truffle hunter. There’s a school and a quite difficult exam you need to pass.
What happened next?
After passing the exam, the next step was to try to find a dog – because without a dog, especially when you are relatively new to truffle hunting, your chances of finding something are practically zero. But finding a dog is not easy. It takes a long time to train one to become an expert hunter - at least a couple of years. When people have trained them they usually want to keep the dog, and if they are prepared to sell them, then they want a huge amount.
How much?
Oh, in the range of Dh85,000 to Dh200,000 for a well-trained one – but a really good one could find 120 kilos of truffles a year, so it can pay for itself very quickly. The kind of dogs we use here are known as Lagotto Romagnolo, and that basically means ‘little lakes of northern Italy’ because originally the dogs were used there to retrieve hunters’ kills from the water.
How did you find your dog?
The man who taught me how to find truffles knew an old truffle hunter who had problems with his heart and was told by his doctor that he needed to get rid of a couple of his dogs. He sold me one of his best dogs, Eda, and with her I started to become a real truffle hunter.
What is a typical day’s hunting like?
Truffles are a fungi that have a symbiotic life with specific trees: In Italy, the principal varieties are oak and pine trees and we have five truffles. Any of those five truffles prefer to grow under different types of tree. So you need to spend a couple of years of making mistakes to be able to understand in any season which trees to look for. Truffles generally regrow under the same trees: In an area of three or four hectares you might have 1,000 trees, but if you spend long enough there you’ll notice that the truffles are always under the same 10 or 20 trees. You must come back until the dog memorises the right trees.
Which truffle is the most valuable?
The white truffles that grow in Italy and Croatia in late September to early December. Every day the prices change, and can be between 1,5004,000 euros per kilo [Dh6,400-17,200]. Black truffles are less valuable.
What was the most valuable one you’ve found?
Three years ago, I found a white truffle weighing 500g that I sold by phone in 10 seconds for Dh5,600 to a restaurant. We sell black truffles [overseas] but white truffles we like to sell in Italy.
Are hunters competitive?
In the search for black truffles, there’s plenty to go round, but everything changes when we’re talking about white truffles. They grow in very limited areas, mostly on private land owned by families. They fence these areas off and have private police when it’s white truffle season. There are problems if they allow multiple hunters in – the dogs’ sense of smell is so strong that everyone converges on the same tree.
Finally, how do like to eat your truffles, Giulio?
Hunters start early in the morning and so when we wake up we need energy. In summer we have eggs with truffles and bread, and after the hunt we have pasta with truffles. In winter we have a bean soup that is full of energy – and of course we slice truffles onto it.
Three years ago, I found a white truffle weighing 500g that I sold by phone in 10 seconds for Dh5,600 to a restaurant