Insight

Abstract

If you’ve ever felt your wallet for the price of a risotto con tartufi in a Turinese trattoria, you’ll know that the white Italian truffle is one of the most overpriced foods on the planet. These famously stinky fungi often retail for around $450 per gram — so those few slivers you spotted in the rice were certainly worth their weight in gold. The main reason for their high price is that farming them is still beyond the ken of modern science. These subterranean fungi are maddeningly difficult to find, but their preferred habitat is beneath the roots of oak trees in the woods above the northern Italian town of Alba. For centuries, these hills have been stalked by secretive individuals, known as the tartufai — professional truffle hunters. To unearth their truffles, the tartufai employ a combination of insights — about the seasons, the weather, the terrain, the flora — along with an inspired assistant, the truffling pig, whose sense of smell is such that it can detect the precious fungi several feet below the ground. The tartufai’s reward for their strange occupation is to conjure a handsome living from a business that requires no investment, has no overheads, no expenditure and not even any physical assets, unless you count the pig, of course. Insight alchemy, indeed.