It’s not required that you taste a fresh black winter truffle before you die. Millions of people die happily without this experience. But once you do taste — and, above all, smell — the real thing, you’ll probably want to do it again.
I was a grown woman when I smelled the king of black truffles, Tuber melanosporum, also known as the Périgord truffle, for the first time. It was a case of fascination at first whiff. It wasn’t the reason I chose to live close to the village of Richerences in the southeast of France, where the world’s biggest truffle market is hosted each winter, but it was one of the big attractions of Provence. I ended up spending more than 20 years sniffing truffles in winter.
Now it looks as if I’m going to spend the next 20 years in the only other French region famous for this particular fungus. Although most Périgord truffles are cultivated in Provence, my new pied à terre is in Périgord in the southwest, which has long been the main processing hub of the eponymous delicacy.
In fact, Périgord did not only give its name to the truffle, but the truffle also changed the name of the region. The Black Périgord around Sarlat is called black because of the colour of the truffle, just as the Purple Périgord around Bergerac is named after the grapes and wine from this vicinity.
Once again, I didn’t choose to live here because of the truffles.
But they do add a distinct joy to living in this part of the world, I decided a fortnight ago on the ancient market square of Sarlat, where the annual truffle festival was celebrated for the first time after the Covid hiatus. Sarlat, apparently the town with the highest density of listed historical buildings per square metre in France, obviously has many other attractions. But on that bright Sunday morning, strolling from one stand to the next to savour an astonishing variety of truffle titbits, I couldn’t think of any better reason for being here in winter.
This gourmet product was once the most expensive food per weight on earth, and with prices often reaching above €1,000 per kilogram it is still far from affordable. Fortunately you need only a few grams to make a luxurious omelette or delicious pasta or — the ultimate luxury — to enjoy some raw slivers on a slice of toasted baguette ...