White truffles are found, not farmed, and that is where the price comes from

The white truffle, Tuber magnatum, lives underground in partnership with the roots of certain trees, and it has never really let itself be domesticated. Italy's national truffle plan, written by the agriculture ministry for 2017-2020, described it as the only prized truffle not yet successfully cultivated.

Something has moved since. In February 2021 the French research institute INRAE announced that a four-year-old orchard in Nouvelle-Aquitaine had produced three white truffles in 2019 and four in 2020, the first ever grown outside the species' natural range. That is a handful, and there is still no commercial supply of cultivated white truffles. In Italy, an experimental plot of about one hectare and 450 trees was planted at Acqualagna in 2025, with the first harvest expected in 2033.

The contrast with the black winter truffle, Tuber melanosporum, explains a great deal. The black one is farmed: in the 2013-2018 averages Spain produced about 47 tonnes a year, France 43 and Italy 19, and the government of Aragon claims more than 10,400 hectares of truffle orchards for the province of Teruel alone. The white one arrives only when, and as much as, the woods decide.

Two price series can be followed year after year. The first is the weekly bourse of Italy's National Truffle Study Centre in Alba, which quotes 15-20 g pieces. The second is published by the Alessandria-Asti chamber of commerce from figures supplied by the local association of trifolau, as truffle hunters are called in Piedmont: it is the price paid to hunters, by size class.

Side by side, the two series show a gap that keeps recurring. In November 2023 the Alba bourse quoted €4,500 a kilo, while hunters were paid €1,000-1,500 for 10-40 g pieces. In early November 2025 Alba quoted €5,000, about €2,270 a pound, and hunters received €1,800-2,700, roughly €820-1,220 a pound.

It is worth being clear about what this comparison is not. The two lists cover different markets and size classes, and the bourse does not say who pays the price it quotes. The two-to-fourfold gap between the columns is an order of magnitude, not a calculated margin.

The third price is the one on the plate. In 2022, when hunters were quoting about €3,000 a kilo, a shaving of 8-10 g in a restaurant cost €40-50: between €4,000 and €6,250 a kilo, service included. Geography matters too. In autumn 2025, while Alba talked of €4,000-4,500 a kilo, white truffles in the Crete Senesi south of Siena sold for €1,300-3,000.

Supply depends on the weather, and the weather is never the same twice. 2017 is remembered as the worst season on record because of drought, and on 3 November the Alba bourse reached €6,000 a kilo. In 2021 a long drought pushed prices at Acqualagna, according to the farmers' union Coldiretti, to €4,000 a kilo for pieces over 50 g. In 2022 drought hit the Langhe and Roero, and at Acqualagna large pieces went from €4,000 to €6,280 a kilo in a single year.

Lack of water is not the only trouble. The 2024 season opened poorly for the opposite reason, too much rain, and on 8 December the bourse climbed to €6,000. Calmer years exist: in 2023 the director of the study centre spoke of prices returning to reason after the spike of the year before.

Within a single season, weight matters. The price per kilo rises with the size of the piece, and on the hunters' lists 50-100 g pieces are consistently worth more than 10-40 g ones: in early November 2025, €2,800-3,600 a kilo against €1,800-2,700. A large, regular truffle is rare, and priced accordingly.

Truffle hunting in Italy is governed by a national law of 1985, Law 752, and by regional laws. Hunters need a permit, obtained by passing an exam, and must be at least 14. They must search with a trained dog and dig with a small spade, and both night searching and the harvesting of unripe truffles are banned.

The pig, which the popular imagination still pairs with truffles, does not appear in the 1985 law at all: by requiring a dog, the law rules it out. The previous law, from 1970, allowed hunting «with a dog or a pig», and it was repealed by Law 752.

The national season for white truffles runs from 1 October to 31 December, and regions may change it after consulting research centres. Since 2024 Piedmont opens on 1 October, citing climate change, and closes on 31 January. Outside those windows white truffles may not be harvested.

One detail causes endless confusion: «Alba truffle» is not a protected designation. It is a common name, listed in the law's annex next to the scientific one. Since 2021, on the other hand, «Truffle hunting and extraction in Italy» has been on UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage.

For saffron you can work out how many hours of labour go into a gram, because the flowers, the stigmas and the picking time are all known. For white truffles that sum cannot be done, and it is better to say why than to invent a number.

There is no reliable data on how many hours of searching a kilo takes, how much a dog or a hunter yields, or what it costs to train and keep a dog. Italy's national plan says it plainly: there are no firm figures on the number of hunters, on production or on turnover. The only national estimate it cites, about one hundred tonnes a year for all truffle species, dates from 2004 and is described as a serious underestimate.

Even the number of hunters is uncertain: published estimates range from about 70,000 to 200,000, depending on the source and the year. The firmest figure concerns a single region: Molise has 4,601 licensed hunters, 1.46% of its population, the highest share in Italy. The claim that 40% of Italian truffles come from Molise, often repeated, comes from a promotional survey that does not even say which species it means.

What can be said is the direction of travel. The national plan describes wild production in steep decline for a century, and in the Langhe the 34 hunters interviewed for a scientific study describe harvests roughly halved over forty to fifty years. Those are perceptions, not measurements, but they all point the same way.

White truffles are used raw, and what people pay for is above all the scent. Laboratory measurements show how quickly that profile moves: stored at 4 °C it changes within the first three days, and at 23 °C compounds foreign to the typical aroma appear between the third and ninth day.

That weighs on the price in two ways. White truffles cannot be stockpiled to wait for a better moment: they are sold in the weeks they are found. And reaching a distant buyer costs money, because shipping has to be fast. There is no such thing as a warehouse-fresh white truffle, and the buyer pays for that too.

Every November the World White Truffle Auction at Grinzane Cavour castle produces the headline of the season. In 2022 the top lot, two truffles weighing 950 g together, sold for €184,000, the auction's record: almost €194 a gram. In 2024 twin truffles weighing 905 g went for €140,000, and in 2025 a triple truffle of 1,009 g for €110,000. From 2021 to 2025 the top lot always went to buyers in Hong Kong.

These are charity auctions, and their prices say nothing about the market: in 2025 the top lot cost about €109,000 a kilo, while the bourse was quoting €5,000.

The most quoted record needs placing correctly too. The $330,000 paid in 2007 by Stanley Ho for a truffle of about 1.3 kg, according to Guinness World Records, did not come from the Alba auction but from a simultaneous sale linking Macau, London and Florence.

Wherever something costs this much, the temptation to substitute it never goes away, and the record shows it. In 2012 Italy's food-safety police in Bologna seized more than 300 kg of Tuber oligospermum flavoured with synthetic aroma and sold as bianchetto, that is Tuber borchii, a different truffle from the white and perfectly legitimate when it is what the label says. In 2019, in Macerata, forestry police inspected about fifty companies and reported eleven people: the condiments contained bis(methylthio)methane and no truffle at all. For black truffles, cases of Chinese Tuber indicum sold as the prized black have been documented, and DNA testing can detect blends down to 0.5%.

Truffle oil deserves its own paragraph. Bis(methylthio)methane, also called 2,4-dithiapentane, is a molecule typical of the white truffle's aroma and is produced synthetically; a review from the University of Camerino states that commercial truffle oils are made with synthetic molecules, and a study of eighteen oils on the Italian market found twelve compounds of doubtful origin. In processed products, real truffle often makes up 0.5% of the weight.

On an EU label the difference is easy to miss, because a synthetic flavouring appears simply as «flavouring». In front of a jar, the useful question is how much truffle it contains, and at what percentage: the rest of the scent comes from a flavouring.