A truffle? What is a truffle?
The South African Truffle Story
Text and Photos by Volker Miros
T
he Black Perigord Truffle is the
legendary culinary fungi- Tuber
melanosporum- we have long
read about in European magazines
and associate it with the good life of
champagne, caviar and a luxury
lifestyle. Ah, the good life!
What is a South African truffle?
Now that is the real question.
Woodford Truffles SA (PTY) Ltd is a
joint enterprise between Woodford
and the Miros Trust. Our aim is to
establish a truffle producing
agricultural industry in South Africa.
We have been working on
developing this industry for the past
10 years. Very soon, our
long, challenging and
exciting journey to produce
truffles will bear fruit ready
for an international world
market.
First, a confession: I am a
microphile at heart. As a
young boy in Germany, my
grandfather trained me to
search for wild mushrooms
in the forest. The splendid
mushrooms we found were
then served at our Sunday
lunch. This fondest of
childhood memories left an indelible,
aromatic impression on my brain. I
tried to grow mushrooms for years in
South Africa and never succeeded. I
am a South African farmer, so failure
was not an option but a challenge.
While researching our book,
Koekumakranka, co-authored with
Renata Coetzeé, I learned about the
Khoi-Khoin culinary tradition of
searching for and collecting the
white Kalahari truffle, known as the
"t-nabba". Writing about the Khoisan
lifestyle- what they ate and how they
lived- we found that truffles where a
protein source for the Bushmen and
were found mostly in the Kalahari.
Wild truffles had then recently been
found in South Africa for the first
time on the chalk downs of the
southern Cape, assuring our
scientists that truffles could be
cultivated here.
optimism of any good farmer, I
succeeded.
My initial research indicated that
black truffles need winter cold snow on the ground and frost- and I
found that our farm in the
Cederberg was ideal to grow truffles.
So we decided to grow black truffles.
It was soon clear to me that the
internet was not nearly enough for
my research. I sought out and met
gurus of truffle production from
around the world: phone calls and
emails quickly created a bond
between me and truffle growers and
innovators from Italy, France
and Spain and New Zealand.
I began my visits to their
orchards. Professor Alessandra
Zambonell from Bologna
University became a good friend
and a great guide in our journey
to produce truffles. Very quickly
it became clear to me that the
science of truffle production
was the basis of success. I
needed to learn what that
science is.
Through my search for t-nabba, I
became interested in the other
truffle, the Black Perigord Truffle.
And so I began to research how to
grow and inoculate black truffles
here in South Africa. With the
patience, determination and
Many of us probably still
associate truffles with all things
European. When we think of
luxurious black truffles we imagine
the worlds of James Bond, the Italian
Riviera or a Michelin-starred
restaurant in France. But this is the
21st century: the world has opened