SNUFFLING TRUFF DIGS UP REWARD OF MATT’S PATIENT PLANNING
Truffle farmer hopes his Welsh delicacy will rival best from the Continent
IT IS a sunny September afternoon in the Welsh countryside and Truff the dog is on to something. She cocks her head to one side, her black nose twitches in the air and then, without a moment’s warning, she is off.
She darts between the rows of oak and hazel trees, nose to the ground, checks herself then starts furiously digging at the base of a hazel tree.
Within seconds, she has unearthed a black ugly lump, covered in soil. It doesn’t look much, but this lump is actually one of the world’s rarest and most expensive foods. It’s a summer truffle, explains Truff’s owner, Matt Sims, and this one is probably worth around £60-70. Not bad for five minutes’ work. Matt is standing in his 11-acre woodland, just outside Usk, which is planted with 5,000 trees. He is a truffle farmer and every single one will soon have truffles growing in its roots, meaning there are thousands more yet to find. In the restaurant trade, truffles fetch around £800/kg. Online, they go for £1,700/kg.
A few centuries ago, truffles, which are a member of the fungi family and related to mushrooms, were everywhere. So much so in fact, that in her
1861 Book of Household Management, Mrs Beeton included a recipe that involved the stewing of 12 truffles in champagne.
But in the past 150 years, the number of wild truffles has declined. These days, you will most likely have only tried an Italian or French truffle, if you have tried them at all. Mostly a fixture on top-end restaurant menus, truffles are highly prized by chefs, who often serve them as shavings on salads, pasta and risottos.
It is thought that demand for the best truffle species outstrips supply by a factor of 10 – supply is limited because they are so hard to grow and wild stocks are depleted – and this is reflected in their price, which has increased by 4% or 5% each year for the past three decades – in 2016 a large Italian white truffle sold for £45,250.
Matt thinks the summer truffle, indigenous to the UK, is good enough to rival even the best from the Continent. But to most, the black-skinned truffle, nobbled with pyramidshaped warts, is virtually unknown. Matt started The Welsh Truffle Company to try to change that.
Autumn is peak truffle hunting time. So far it’s been a good year, said Matt. It’s all to do with the warm temperatures and the Welsh rain, which was distinctly lacking last year.
But such a rare thing as a truffle doesn’t just arrive in the soil by accident – it takes years and years of careful planning and a lot of patience. Matt planted his first trees in 2008 and only now is he beginning to reap the rewards.
“We bought 4,800 summer truffle trees, which had been inoculated with the spores of the summer truffle, or Tuber aestivum, just over 10 years ago,” explained Matt.
He also bought 200 Mediterranean oak trees which had been inoculated with the Perigord truffle.
In 2016, he was the first person to ever cultivate the summer truffle in Wales. In March 2017, he was the first to cultivate the more sought-after winter Perigord truffle in the United Kingdom.
It was all a bit of an experiment initially for the man who says he has tried his hand “at anything and everything”, including carpet fitting.
Formerly working in IT and computing, 51-year-old Matt still works part time as a floor surveyor. But these days, he is more often than not found walking up and down the rows of trees with Truff and her apprentice, Bella, rather than on his hands and knees fitting carpets.
“I like to do things that are a bit weird and which are a bit of a gamble,” explained Matt, in his vast oakbeamed kitchen. The large family home, which he shares with his wife of 25 years, Sarah, is nestled in a sheltered hollow just yards away from the edge of the truffle trees.
The woodland was a way for Matt to make use of some “spare land” and he had his eyes on the lucrative potential of truffles.
“Back then I thought if I start growing truffles now, I could end up 10 years ahead of everyone else,” he explained. “Truffles are very expensive and I thought it might be a very good return for the future.”
Now, he has to force himself not to go out hunting for the mysterious delicacy. “It’s like any type of treasure hunt,” Matt said. “I try to stop myself sometimes, but I always end up in the woods with the dogs.” His biggest ever truffle find was a 180g summer truffle, a “real beauty” about the size of a cricket ball.
But farming truffles has long been