This truffle hunter follows the wine

Where Pierre Sourzat goes, truffles follow. “Everywhere in the world where people talk about truffles, I’ve been,” says the 70-year-old Frenchman, founder of La Station Trufficole de Cahors-Le Montat more than 30 years ago and consultant on the development of orchards. truffles all over the world. Paso Robles, California to Perth, Australia. “I’ve been to China, I’ve been to Japan. I’ve been to South Africa, Morocco, Finland, everywhere, even the UK.

Today, black truffles — the most commercially viable version of this fungal treat, historically native to France, Spain, and Italy — can be found on every continent except Antarctica. “Where there is wine, you can produce truffles,” says Sourzat, who lives in southwestern France, very close to where he grew up. “It’s almost the same ecology, almost the same requirements.” The keys are a Mediterranean climate, high pH soils and strategic irrigation, as well as the presence of young trees whose roots have been properly inoculated with Tuber melanosporum spores. It sounds easier than it is.

Climate change allows the spread. “You can produce further north in the northern hemisphere and further south in the southern hemisphere,” he explains.

Truffle hunter Pierre Sourzat / Photo courtesy of Pierre Sourzat

While truffle hunting runs in his ancestral blood – his paternal grandfather, who bore the same name, was a famous truffle specialist – Sourzat was not born a fan. He remembers looking for truffles with his maternal grandmother when he was four years old, and then being served their generosity. “The first time I tasted truffles, I wasn’t very interested because the truffle was black and I suspected something was wrong,” he recalls. He quickly converted, incorporating the search for truffles into his love of finding (and eating) mushrooms, such as morels and chanterelles in spring and summer, followed by porcini mushrooms in the fall. (He also collected snails to sell for change as a child.) His two adult daughters are also fans, inheriting his love and enjoying truffles in omelettes or on tagliatelle.

It is increasingly possible to find local truffles all over the world, thanks to people like Sourzat. Take Australia, where the country’s $40 million truffle industry rivals Old World production. The United States is another hotbed: you’ll find truffles grown on both coasts, ranging from North Carolina to Virginia and from Washington to Oregon, where there’s also a booming market for truffle picking. native. Oregon’s first farmed truffle was discovered in the Willamette Valley in 2013; Meanwhile, growers in the Walla Walla Valley are hoping to tap into a new market by harvesting truffles earlier than anywhere else.

In California, there are now reliable harvests in Sonoma and El Dorado counties, and truffles were just discovered in Paso Robles earlier this year for the first time. There’s an ongoing attempt to resurrect America’s first black truffle farm in Mendocino County, where the fungus was unearthed in 1987, and the state’s largest truffle farm was recently planted in Mendocino County. Lake. Napa is next, where French winemaker Jean-Charles Boisset has teamed up with the American Truffle Company.

Although not all of his compatriots are thrilled that their famous mushroom is now grown elsewhere, Sourzat is nonetheless proud of his work. “I was interested in sharing my experience with Australian scientists and American scientists because science can progress if you have a lot of exchange,” he says, adding, “but some people don’t understand that.”

This article originally appeared in the November 2022 issue of Passionate about wine magazine. Click here to subscribe today!

Posted on October 24, 2022

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