Record breaking white truffle

From the GUARDIAN:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/italy/story/0 ... 99,00.html

Impressive, yes. But not nearly as noteworthy as the giant beet from the Evanston Farmer's Market. http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.ph ... light=beet][url][/url]

FYI:

The truffle sold for $330,000

You'd think someone would have figured out a way to farm them by now.

RiverWester wrote:You'd think someone would have figured out a way to farm them by now.

There are people endlessly working on that. I had a friend who wanted to import oak saplings innoculated with truffle spawn. He was going to buy some property to grow these trees then attempt to harvest truffles after 10 years. The only obsticle he could not overcome was the USDA.

Another friend went to a truffle harvest. She said there was a lot of speculative digging around tree roots, which likely cause a lot of collateral damage to the trees. She wasn't too enthusiastic about truffles after watching the process.

Regards,

There actually are a few truffle "farms" operating in the pacific northwest. Forests full of trees producing white and black truffles.

Only problem is, the white ones they grow are generally not the same truffles you get from Alba, they're tuber gibossum and tuber oregense (oregon white truffles) and tuber borchii vittad (bianchetto white truffles). The Alba truffles are tuber magnatum. The bianchettos are the same as the white truffles from Tuscany, and are said to be inferior to the Alba truffles. I wish I could say that from experience