How Walking a Dog in France Can Yield Big Rewards

Holly has a nose for truffles-Photo by Wallace Immen — Holly has a nose for truffles--Photo by Wallace Immen

You’ve got to give full credit to the first person who dug up a withered ball of black fungus in an oak forest and decided it might be something delicious to shave onto the evening’s pasta.

But truffles turned out to make food so delicious crowds were asking where can I get more of that? That’s not as easy as it sounds, as we were about to find out.

We’re at a rural farm in France whose main cash crop isn’t visible. In fact the farm seems like an oak forest that’s never seen a plow. And the hero is a truffle-sniffing super dog.

AmaWaterways prides itself on arranging small group unique experiences and on our Rhone river cruise aboard AmaKristina from Avignon to Lyon this was one of them, with our group of only a dozen visiting this farm in the Cotes du Rhone, near Grignan, east of Lyon.

Christian Aubade is out to greet us in hunting gear along with his faithful dog Holly. Pigs can also locate truffles but they’re big and noisy and tend to eat the ones they find as soon as the farmer can dig them up, he explains, Dogs are extremely accurate truffle sniffers and they can stay in the house in cold weather; try doing that with a pig.

Truffle farmers here train Labradors and spaniels as pups to recognize the scent of truffle and then get a treat as a reward. It’s obvious Holly loves the role and the attention and after enthusiastic introductions to our group, she immediately heads out through the forest pawing the ground about halfway between two towering oak trees.

I found it where’s my treat?–Photo by Wallace Immen

It’s less than a minute before the dog is digging furiously into the dirt and Christian uses a metal hook that’s been handed down to him by his grandfather to dig out a bumpy black lump about the size of a golf ball. Christian immediately gives Holly her finders fee–a cheese -flavored doggie treat.

The thing about truffles is that they only grow in the wild. This means their supply is unpredictable. There are two main varieties: the black truffle found in fall and winter and the white truffle typically found in summer. The black one is more prized and therefore more expensive.

All the dog slogging and hand digging accounts for the incredibly high prices truffles bring everywhere. But here in the heart of Provence there are still 500 truffle farms and there can be close to a ton of truffles a week dug up and on sale in the local markets during the winter, Christian says.

A truffle may not look like much, but it’s valuable and extremely tasty–Photo by Wallace Immen

And it’s been a tradition here for a long time. We know the Romans loved truffles and they sought them out here when the legions ruled the three parts of ancient Gaul. The fungus apparently went out of favor during the superstitious Middle Ages because their lumpy darkness reminded peoples of witchcraft and devils.

But they miraculously came back into fashion with a papal dispensation when Avignon became the home of a number of truffle-loving popes in the fourteenth century. And the rest is history.

Local wines served during the truffle tasting–Photo by Wallace Immen

After the hunt, we head inside the farmhouse for a truffle tasting with tasty fresh breads and samplings of (as much as we can drink) of the local Rhone valley wines. The wines are from the Cotes du Rhone appellation of Saint Alban and they’re so luscious we have seconds, even though it’s only noon.

We say good bye to Christian and Holly with jars of truffle spreads and sauces to bring back as souvenirs to the AmaKristina, where AmaWaterways’ chefs anticipated our enthusiasm for the fabulous fungus and served a truffle ravioli for lunch.

It had us asking an age-old question: Where can I get more?

Story by Wallace Immen, The Cruisington Times

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