Tennessee Truffles

A recent article in the New York Times reported that Dr. Tom Michaels, a plant pathologist, is growing black truffles of the sort usually found in France in Chuckey, TN. The good doctor sprouted hazelnut trees from seed to create an orchard (is orchard an appropriate word for a bunch of nut trees?), inoculating the roots with Tuber melanosporum, the revered Périgord truffle, before transplanting them outdoors seven years ago. Dr. Michaels, who grew up on a mushroom farm and lives in a modest East Tennessee ranch house, has been thinking about all this for a time. In fact, he wrote his thesis about in vitro truffle cultivation. He knew about unsuccessful efforts at domestic truffle cultivation over the last three decades, and given the truffle bonanza, he might be trading houses soon.

Writer Molly O'Neill explained her Times piece, "Tending a truffle orchard is as much of an art as it is a science and it is, most of all, an act of faith — it typically takes 6 to 12 years for the fungi to form truffles in the earth. Mystery and scarcity are part of the truffle’s allure.

"According to James M. Trappe, a professor emeritus of mycology at Oregon State University and the co-author of the forthcoming Trees, Truffles and Beasts: How Forests Function (Rutgers University Press), there are about 60 species of true truffles, the subterranean fungi that attach to a plant’s roots and issue long tendrils that gather nutrition for the plant and use the carbohydrates that the plant returns to eventually form the 'fruit' we call truffles — but only a dozen are prized in the kitchen.

"Most fungi sprout a stem and cap that contain reproductive spores. The truffle does not. The truffle is a 'sack of spores,' explained Dr. Trappe, and while other mushrooms need nothing but a rustling wind to loosen and spread their seed, the subterranean bulb needs to be digested and excreted by an animal. In order to attract rodents and marsupials, the truffle, like a tiny underground perfume factory, produces up to 50 different chemicals that combine to create a scent powerful enough to penetrate up to three feet of earth."

Dr. Michaels is not the only American grower attempting to raise "black gold" in American soil. Franklin Garland of Hillsborough, NC, began growing truffles in the 1980s and, in fact, was Dr. Michaels' truffle muse. He has reportedly given trees to 45 farmers to give truffles a try. Charles K. Lefevre of New World Truffles in Eugene, OR, told O'Neill that there are about 300 truffle growers in the US.

One, perhaps, is Truffled Truffles or Eros of Santa Fe, NM (I'm not sure which is the name of the comapny and which is the brand of the candy. In any case, I purchased a small piece box of truffles (the fungus) and truffle (the sweet) encased in to-die-for Belgian chocolate in Santa Fe last year. The 4.9-ounce box of five truffles cost $18. A 4.9-ounce box of five Truffled Truffles is $18, which can be purchased in town or ordered from Senor Murphy, a Santa Fe candy purveyor. Expensive, but fabulous fusion for those of us who love both kinds of truffles.

Tennessee Truffles