Turning up truffles

By KATH GANNAWAY
THE first sniff of a promising truffle industry in the Yarra Valley sent Melbourne restaurateurs and the media into a gastronomic frenzy last week.
Truffles are grown in small quantities in Tasmania, New South Wales and Western Australia, but the harvest last Wednesday, 20 July, of a 250 gram black truffle from beneath a hazelnut tree on the Kerr family’s property, Tibooburra, in Hoddles Creek, is a first for Victoria.
The Kerr family has owned Tibooburra, an Angus beef cattle stud and 80acre vineyard with its own wine label, since 1967.
Tibooburra is partners in the truffiere, the name given to places where truffles are grown, with Duncan Garvey of Perigord Truffles in Tasmania.
All up, with the help of the specially trained nose of Tasmanian truffle hound Pickles, another six smaller black truffles, the world’s most valuable fungi, were lifted from the rich, red soil, bringing the total harvest to 750 grams.
“It’s a holy grail experience as a primary producer,” Tibooburra truffiere manager Greg Kerr said.
“We started talking about what we could do with some marginal slopes below the vineyard about four years ago”
They had heard of a fledgling truffle industry in Tasmania and of Mr Garvey who was keen to get some interest in truffles going in Victoria.
“Duncan inspected a number of sites and his eyes lit up when he saw this particular site below our vineyard,” Mr Kerr said.
“It was pretty shady, no good for cattle or vines, but very similar to some of the slopes he had seen in France where truffles occur naturally.”
About 400 hazelnut, English oak and Ilex trees, their root systems treated with the truffle fungus, were planted three and a half years ago and the wait began.
Mr Kerr said Tibooburra “went out on a limb” to finance the state’s first truffiere.
“There were a lot of Doubting Thomases saying ‘you guys are jokers’,” Mr Kerr said.
But the Kerrs and Mr Garvey had the last laugh last week.
“We’ve vindicated our belief that we were really onto something that was potentially really exciting by turning up Victoria’s first black truffle,” he said.
He said the biggest growth potential was overseas where they were aiming at tapping into a $3000 per kilo market.
Truffles grown in winter in Victoria and Tasmania would supplement the shortage of truffles in countries in the northern hemisphere during summer, he explained.
“What Tibooburra and Perigord is aiming for is to capitalise on those growth opportunities,” Mr Kerr said.
The key to success will be getting the truffles to those overseas markets quickly.
“Truffles need to be consumed within seven to 10 days of harvest to be at their optimum perfume and pungency and we would be looking particularly at Tokyo and Paris,” he said.
Mr Kerr said it was because the pungent perfume of truffles translated into a “magnificently sublime” taste that people were willing to pay a lot of money for them.
Just 48 hours after the harvest, Mr Kerr was sitting opposite renowned Melbourne chef Paul Wilson at the Botanical Restaurant in South Yarra.
He said Mr Wilson was as excited about the locally grown delicacy as many others, declaring them “the real McCoy”.
While he admits he hasn’t yet tasted truffle, Mr Kerr is poetic in his description of the aroma.
“The perfume is something to behold, pungent, an array of aromas ranging from something like a calf’s breath,” he said.
“You have a molasses smell – a funky, earthy undergrowth smell.
“The reason it’s so highly sought after is that the pungency and perfume translates to extraordinary flavour.
“You only need a few shavings and suddenly you’ve got magic happening.
“It takes on a life of its own.”