Summer truffles a sweet surprise for growers

Lighter and more delicate-tasting truffles have been growing by stealth in central Victoria. 

Truffle-sniffing dogs Winston and Lottie surprised the owners of Black Cat Truffles in December, stumbling across a summer variety ready for harvest north of Ballarat.

Co-owner Tom Eadie said it was the first summer harvest of truffles in Victoria and opened up new business opportunities.

“We found quite a lot of them,” he said.

“It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise as the trees were planted 15 years ago, by previous owners, and inoculated with summer truffles.

“But up until now neither the previous owners nor us have been able to find any, and all of a sudden this year it’s gone from nothing up to 35 kilograms.”

New business opportunity

The summer variety of truffles have a subtler flavour than their winter counterpart, which has excited local chefs.

“The truffles from Black Cat Truffles have always come to us in prime condition, so I was really curious to see the difference between the winter and summer varieties,” Dianne Ray, owner of The Shared Table restaurant in Buninyong, said.

“The winter truffle is quite heady and imparts flavour very easily and you don’t need to use much of it, but summer truffles are lighter and brighter,” she said.

The summer truffles were recently featured on Ms Ray’s menu to highlight the flavours of a crispy skin chicken waffle with parmesan custard.

“It just lends a beautiful extension to the flavours,” Ms Ray said.

“Truffle flavour seems to be brought out best by the use of fat and fat seems to carry the truffles very well.

“We’ve found through using it in parmesan, cream or butter, it enhances the flavours of what it’s used in, making the dining experience really delicious.”

On the hunt

Co-owner of the truffière, Kristen Simpson, says on December 28, their Australian shepherd, Winston, stumbled across the truffles while playing out in the orchard.

“Up until recently, Lottie [a Lagotto Romagnolo] has been by far the more accomplished forager,” Ms Simpson said.

“In fact, during the winter season, she finds at least 90 per cent of our truffles.

“But on this occasion, Winston was just wandering along the rows of summer truffle trees and suddenly became very interested — it was incredibly out of season, so we didn’t know what he was doing.

“Then we looked down and there was a truffle making its way to the surface — something we were not expecting, but it was a very exciting discovery.”

Summer truffles are hardier than the winter varieties because they need to survive the heat,” Mr Eadie said.

Sniffing out a market

Mr Eadie said they did not rush to get the summer truffles to market because they were new to the variety and unsure of the quality.

“When we did find them, we didn’t know how many we would have and we started testing the flavour ourselves,” he said.

The pair reached out to a summer truffle farm in Tasmania to see if the flavour of their harvest compared, and Mr Eadie said they were delighted with the quality.

Ms Simpson said the summer truffles had helped recover some of the losses to their agritourism business caused by Victoria’s COVID restrictions.

“It’s been an interesting few years — lots of stops and starts and upheavals that we’ve all experienced in different ways, so it was a delightful discovery and a bonus,” she said.

“We can now investigate introducing some hunts and truffle pizzas in the summer months, which we had no idea we’d be able to do.”