Pigs used to be used for truffle hunting, but the pigs eat them, so these days most people use dogs. Photo / 123RF
Pigs used to be used for truffle hunting, but the pigs eat them, so these days most people use dogs. Photo / 123RF
Farrah has a nose for divine earthy truffles buried deep in the Bordeaux soil. Catherine Masters meets a talented collie.
Her name's Farrah, as in Farrah Fawcett, and she's mighty pretty. She's awfully friendly, too. We're not supposed to pet her but Farrah is so excited to see us she doesn't make that easy.
She's a working dog, though I suspect she hasn't a clue how crucial she is. A French border collie, soon she will bound off into the trees in the distance to sniff out lunch.
Farrah is a truffle dog, and if we go around cuddling her, we are told, rather sternly, she might become distracted and bang goes our chance of that truffle meal.
Truffles are a mushroom, an underground fungus, that live on the roots of certain trees. Summer truffles lie near the surface and winter truffles are deeper, perhaps 20cm under the earth.
Farrah will sniff out summer truffles, as per the season, but here at la Truffiere de Pechalifour, in Perigord in the Dordogne, we are also going to sample the rarest and most famous truffle of them all, the black diamond, or winter truffle - or, to give it its official name, the tuber melanosporum.
Summer truffles, which don't have anything like such a strong taste, fetch about 150 ($252) a kilo, but the tuber melanosporum fetches about 1000 and higher in Paris.
After some sly pats while owner Edouard Aynaud is looking the other way, Farrah gets to work and races off to the trees.
Soon she is pawing at the ground and Edouard is yelling, "stop, stop, stop".
Truffle dog Farrah and her owner, Edouard Aynaud, who says her nose never lets her down. Photo / Catherine Masters
Within a minute, she has located a medium-sized summer truffle, with plenty more to come.
Some of those gently unearthed with Edouard's little pickaxe are like knobbly pebbles, but others are bigger, like dented, earth-coloured ping-pong balls.
Farrah's nose, says Edouard, never lets her down. In fact, he says proudly, he has never owned a more intelligent dog.
We have bussed to Edouard's truffle farm through glorious countryside thick with vineyards and little stone villages, from our base, the Viking Fortesi, the river boat that is taking us on a river cruise of Bordeaux.
There is wine tasting galore on this trip, of course, and we stop at many gorgeous chateaux along the way, but there are other treats too, like this one at Edouard's truffiere, where Farrah will find the truffles if they are ripe - if they are not ripe, she will walk right by them.
Her training involved gradually getting her used to the smell of truffles in the house, then little film canisters containing the smell were buried outside.
Edouard's recommendation for training a truffle dog is simple: never tell the dog off, and when she marks where the canister is, give her as many cuddles as you possibly can while telling her she's the most wonderful dog in the world.
When Farrah is done truffle hunting she herds us up to the farm house, past green fields where Edouard's horses and donkey drink in the warmth of an idyllic summer's day.
Truffle dog Farrah and her owner, Edouard Aynaud, who says her nose never lets her down. Photo / Catherine Masters
Lunch is being cooked by wife Carole and served in the lounge of their 17th century stone cottage, set among a collection of old stone cottages in a tiny village where most people are related and where roses ramble and climb.
Carole cooks up a storm with the truffles Farrah has found, plus some of those black diamond truffles.
The bread is passed around with butter mixed with summer truffle; the scrambled eggs are infused with winter truffle; the pasta comes with black truffle cream and parmesan - everything is tinged with a faintly earthy, delicate, mushroomy flavour.
For dessert, there's vanilla ice cream with truffle caramel and though it goes against the grain to add mushrooms to dessert, it is delicious.
Later, Edouard explains the symbiotic relationship between the truffle and the tree. The tree captures the carbon dioxide and gives it to the truffle, he says, and in return, the truffle looks for mineral salts and water in the soil and gives them to the tree. It's a "fair exchange" but sometimes, when there are a lot of truffles, they become parasites for the tree and a war breaks out.
The truffle farmer is a mediator, trying to keep a good balance, but eventually the tree wins and after a few decades it won't give off any more truffles.
Edouard says his village is experimenting to try to get the old truffle trees to produce truffles again - but this is top secret, "we don't speak of it", he says.
The writer visited the truffle farm courtesy of Viking Cruises.
