Cooking For Engineers

[Wine and Food tube]

In Sarrion, Spain the truffle growers are under strict control by the Aragon department of agriculture, some 15,000 oak seedlings a year receive the corresponding mycorrhization (inoculation with T. melanosporum spores) treatment before being planted. It will take some five years before the first truffles appear.
Every Sunday from around December 15th through to March 15th there is a fresh truffle market in Sarrion where prices are established weekly. While at the very beginning of the season the price
may start of at some €400 per kilo (2 ½ lb), and it may hit €1,000 around Christmas.



All the way over in Manjimup, Western Australia the Wine and Truffle Co only found a single truffle in 2003, but expect to collect around 600 kilograms in the next three months. That will put Hazel Hill farm back on track considering that the product sells to restaurants for about $2000 a kilogram and retails up to $3000.
Wine and truffle Co hopes its plantation alone will yield more that five tonnes in the next few years.

The production in France, home of the black truffle, has plummeted from 1000 tonnes at the turn of the last century to less than 10 tonnes a year.
Total world production is at only 10 to 50 tonnes.

The reason for the jump in truffle growth in Western, Australia is because of the Mediterranean climate.
The first truffle was harvested over two weeks ago, and they are expecting to start ripening in mass volumes from now on.
View video of truffle hunting at
http://www.wineandfoodtube.com/tube/view/0/black-truffle-hunting-in-australia-526/