The most important international festival dedicated to truffle is taking place in Alba, the White Truffle Capital of the World

 

Truffle Fair 2018 Edition / Fiera Internazionale Tartufo Bianco D’Alba, one of the main showcases of high gastronomy and Italian excellence, is dedicated to the relationship between the land and the moon.

From 6th October to 25th November Alba, the Piedmont region of Italy, features once again the International Alba White Truffle Fair – a meeting of culture, territory, sensory and gastronomic experiences. The White Truffle of Alba (scientific name TUBER MAGNATUM PICO) is considered the most prestigious truffle par excellence. The Black Summer Truffle has a specific flavor, and its aromatic scent makes it highly appreciated in the kitchen, while the Precious Black Truffle (scientific name Tuber Melanosporum Vitt.) Is probably the most known truffle in the International Cuisine.

With over 600,000 visitors from the last edition, this is the highlight of the truffle event for excellent food and wine tourism, one of the main tourist attractions for the Langhe, Roero and Monferrato areas.

The truffle production is an event hard to predict in advance, the rain showers at the end of summer can often make a difference, therefore although the truffle-hunters prefer to keep quiet now, there’s some cautious optimism about the presence of the Alba White Truffle as a consequence of the generous rainfall during the first part of the year, which created some reserves useful for the formation of fruiting bodies.

 

In the collective peasant imagination, truffles are the products of the land that best represent what is close to nature.

The truffle hunting is an indicative path made up of clues and conjectures. The truffle-hunter improves his senses and is ready to see every sign and natural circumstance, putting together the knowledge linked to space-time coordinates, the result of his own memory linked to the lunar calendar. In other words, the hunting is based on an organized set of traditional knowledge and a more complex search for natural clues, including the lunar phases, the relative influence of gravitational force and reflected light.

The truffle-hunters wait for the new moon for a more fruitful hunting which is lit, in the cold late autumn nights, by the full moon. The truffle is a marker of the farming calendar and the annual peasant practice that is linked to the passing of the seasons, the moons and all the natural events. The intimate knowledge of the times and places of the truffle determines its properties more than the land does. The influence of the moon on the vegetative cycle of truffles is not scientifically verified, however, in the rich list of the little rationalizable events surrounding the Alba White Truffle, its role becomes an hypothesis because the “Moon: we must believe in it”.