Te Puke Truffles produces top-quality black Perigord truffles, and owners Maureen and Colin Binns offer the opportunity for members of the public to join them during harvest.
“I’m just going to put Big Baby back into the freezer,” Maureen Binns announces as she slips through the sliding door of her Te Puke home, holding a prized 250g truffle.
Her truffle sniffer dogs, cocker spaniel poodle cross Sam, and springer spaniel Jed, quickstep beside her, noses in the air.
These two can smell a truffle from up to 20m away and Big Baby is temptingly within reach.
The large, knobbly, coal-coloured, pungent-smelling truffle is precious cargo (the biggest find from last season) and has been pulled out of the freezer for show.
Now, “he” will be re-wrapped in his paper towel “nappy” and placed back into a glass jar for safekeeping.
A nappy needs to be changed each time the truffle is pulled out of the freezer, as truffles, which are an edible fungus, leach moisture and need to be kept dry so they don’t rot.
Meanwhile, on the dining room table, two or three fresh truffles are resting on paper towels under a glass dome with chicken eggs, slowly infusing them with their rich, earthy aroma, which goes through the shell, through the egg white, and into the yellow fat.
This is a process that needs at least 24 hours.
“When you crack the egg, and you beat it up, you’ve got a truffled egg,” Maureen explains.
Alongside the dome is a selection of truffle-infused delicacies — jarred salt, butter, and honey — all of Maureen’s creations that she’s whipped up in her kitchen with the help of wall-to-ceiling cookbooks.
“I was a librarian and I’m a foodie,” she says.
“I just eat it,” Colin jokes.
The Binns’ truffiere produces top-quality black Perigord truffles and for the past four years in conjunction with Tauranga’s adventure foodie business Kitchen Takeover, they’ve invited the public to join them during harvest, which this year began on May 11 and runs until the end of July.
Truffles start to grow in December and keep growing until mid-April. They then sit there and wait for colder weather to ripen.
Truffle hunts for the public start this weekend.
Best of the best
While there are many truffieres in New Zealand, including several in the Bay of Plenty, the Binns’ property has proved to be one of the highest per-tree producers and has been featured on TV1′s Country Calendar and Three’s A New Zealand Food Story.
They will share their story with the public during hunts, which includes watching Jed and Sam in action, as they sniff for “nature’s black gold” on the 0.5ha truffiere, which features 212 oak and hazelnut trees.
Truffles grow on tree roots and there are varieties that grow on different trees around the world, inoculated with the required truffle mycorrhizae.
Guests will get to touch and smell the truffles, as well as sample some of Maureen’s truffle snacks.
Then, there’s the option to visit Tauranga’s Sugo restaurant for an Italian lunch, which includes black Perigord truffles.
As well as using truffles for the hunting experience, Sugo will be offering a truffle menu separately to the Kitchen Takeover event for the entire 8-10 week truffle season.
Head chef Ian Harrison says he aims to give punters a decadent experience.
“Most people would have experienced truffle through truffle oil, which is produced from a chemical compound to make the truffle flavour.”
Whereas fresh truffles are more “rich”.
Because of truffles’ affinity with fats, they work well with eggs, icecream, cream, and soft cheeses.
“It is an aroma-based product so it is about the smell,” he says, comparing its uniqueness to the spice vanilla.
“The misconception of vanilla is that everyone thinks it’s sweet but it’s actually an incredibly bitter spice — it changes when you mix it. It’s very much like perfume. It needs to be infused to be made better, like a cup of tea.”
The Binnses also supply Kereru Brewing, which uses their truffles in limited-edition beers; and restaurants Amisfield in Queenstown, Ahi in Auckland, and Paengaroa’s The Trading Post Osteria Italiana.
Kylie and Simone Saglia, the owners of The Trading Post Osteria Italiana, will be using the Binnses’ fresh truffles shaved with a mandolin onto their pasta dishes and shaved onto their Risotto Al Tartufo with truffle paste.
Simone is from the Piedmont region in Italy, which is famous for Tuber Magnatum, “the white truffle”.
“As a chef, he can’t get white truffles here, but to get the (black Perigord) is a nice statement from home,” Kylie says.
Buried treasure filled with mystery
Truffles sell for $2.50 to $3.50 a gram depending on the grading, meaning a golf ball-sized truffle can cost hundreds.
Part of the reason they’re expensive is that a truffle crop is never guaranteed, and if a truffiere does produce, there’s no year-on-year crop average.
The Binnses have been lucky enough to produce truffles every season, producing a total of 90kg (of sellable and unsellable truffles) in a top year.
In 2021, they found a nest of three truffles weighing in at a kilo.
This year, the truffles are running two weeks earlier than before and have “an amazing aroma”, Maureen says.
“We still don’t know how many there are, and we don’t know where they are.
Dogs Jed and Sam find the truffles and then Maureen and Colin have to dig them out of the dirt.
“It could be the size of my little fingernail, it could be the size of that,” she says, motioning to a truffle the size of a teacup.
The dogs are kept outside of the fenced and gated orchard unless they’re “working”.
Just like kiwifruit orchards, their truffiere has been impacted by a wet summer and that means it’ll probably affect size.
Rain means too much grass under the tree canopy, but Colin can’t mow it for fear of disturbing the truffles, which grow attached to the tree roots by tiny subterranean tentacles or “umbilical cord”.
When it comes to trying to optimise the crop, there are as many theories as there are growers, Maureen reckons.
“You’re growing a mystery.”
Despite truffles having been around for “hundreds and hundreds of years”, Colin says there’s still only about 10 per cent known about them by scientists and some still argue, “Is it a fungus or is it a vegetable?”
“They defy most things fungal because they grow under the ground (as opposed to out of it). The truffle relies on the host tree to provide it with the nutrients that it gets from photosynthesis to feed the truffle. It’s a very interesting subject,” says Colin, who also can provide a fascinating history of truffles in New Zealand and overseas.
New Zealand is a small market compared with the rest of the world, with Spain the biggest producer of truffles, followed by France, Italy, and Croatia.
Asked why their truffiere produces so well, Maureen says she can only guess it’s their attention to orchard maintenance and monitoring.
“Every tree has its name and number. And for every tree, I record who’s produced, how much, and the weight of every truffle.
“You can’t grow truffles unless you do the mahi.”
Before buying their property in 2007, which is 6.9ha in total, and planting their trees in 2008, they’d never even tried a truffle.
“Being townies, we decided we would plant a 0.5ha sheep paddock with truffle trees. What were we thinking? I wish now that we’d planted 3-4 paddocks with truffle trees because we’ve been loving the truffle journey so much. Living on the edge with our feet still firmly on the ground — you can’t beat the excitement of finding a ripe truffle.”
“The aroma to me, is one of the most amazing aromas there is,” Colin says.
“He has truffle salt every night on his meal. Truffle butter or truffle cream in mashed potatoes, mashed kumara,” Maureen adds.
Are they good for you?
“I’m sure it makes you happy,” Maureen quips. Colin nods in agreement and says it’s a superfood.
They also grow chillis, macadamia nuts, walnuts, “every type of citrus”, nashi pears, and apples.
For those who come for the hunts, it is a whole experience, the pair say.
“If we go down there and don’t find a truffle, well, you go pig or deer hunting and you might not necessarily get a pig or a deer. The dogs can only find a truffle on a hunt if there is a ripe one to be found.
“But in every truffle hunt so far, we’ve found a truffle.”
Colin says 80 to 90 per cent of the people who come to their farm have never smelt or tasted a truffle before.
And the difference between visiting their place and a restaurant is that “it’s not dolled up with truffle oil”. It’s a raw, rural experience.
“It’s the intrigue or mystery of truffles,” Colin muses.
“The elusive truffle.”
# It costs $99 for the hunt and $69 for lunch at Sugo.
On the three-course menu is an entree: truffle and liver parfait; tamarillo conserve; brioche toast. Main: truffle gnocchi carbonara; crispy pancetta; soft hen egg; aged parmesan; truffle crispy chicken thigh and truffle saltimbocca; creamed leeks; shaved prosciutto; truffle sauce. And dessert: dark chocolate ganache; truffle ice cream; caramelized apple and puff pastry crisp.
For tickets visit www.kitchentakeover.co.nz For Maureen’s truffle-infused products, visit www.tepuketruffles.com
How the Binnses trained their truffle dogs
Slithers from ripe truffles were put into old film canisters with holes drilled in the top.
The canisters were then placed under garden clay pots. Knowing the scent of truffles, the dogs would then be tasked with finding the correct pots.
Once they started finding them regularly, canisters would be hidden amongst strong-smelling herbs such as parsley and lavender, so they’d be challenged by other aromas.
