Marco della Cava|USA TODAY
SANTA ROSA, Calif. – Leo, a two-year-old Lagotto Romagnolo truffle dog, suddenly claws at the base of a hazelnut tree.
“He's got something,” says an excited Brian Malone, 39, plantation managerJackson family wines.
Malone digs in the sand and reveals his prize: a ball the size of a lacrosseKnolmelanosporum, the black truffle from the Perigord that usually comes from France. For $1,000 a pound you can call it black gold.
About a decade into his truffle project, Malone is off to a flying start, having collected more than 30 pounds of the aromatic treasure in recent months.
► Images:Why are truffles so damn expensive?
The fact that some truffles have been found in Sonoma Countya region an hournorth of San Francisco and best known for its wines, is creating excitement among aspiring American growers of the great European crop. Experts say it could become a $6 billion global business within a few years.
“Some farmers have been on hold to see if truffles could take off here in the United States, but hearing about the success in California and elsewhere has people energized,” said Brian Upchurch, president of the North American Truffle Growers Association in Asheville. North Carolina.
Truffles have been hunted and served for centuries throughout Europe, where pigs were often used to find the delicacy in the roots of wild oak trees. The royal family rejoiced over them.
But while France and Italy are rich in truffle history, American growers have one major advantage: Chefs value freshness, and an American truffle can go from the ground to the chef's kitchen in a day or night, while a European truffle can take days. loses its scent
“A fresh truffle is intoxicating,” says chef Ken Frank, who likes to serve fresh pasta with shaved slices of Perigord truffle at his Michelin-starred Napa Valley restaurant, La Toque. "The hazy perfume allows me to do magic tricks."
Today there are several dozen farms growing truffles across the country. Many are predictably insideforested corners of California,Oregon, Washington, Idaho and North Carolina. And the man who helped farmers get most of them started is finding his services in high demand.
“We are witnessing the very beginning of this industry in North America,” says Charles Lefevre of New World Truffiers, an Oregon-based company that provides grafted seedlings as a guidance and service for the maintenance of truffle farms.
Lefevre has 22 customers who successfully produce truffles. Many farmers choose to develop their own techniques and are often very secretive about their methods.
“There's a total mystery to truffle farming, and that's the fun of it,” says Susan Alexander, who has been in the truffle business since 2006 and has a 300-acre orchard in Pinehurst, North Carolina. “I met a man from Spain, a truffle guru, and after we became friends over email, he shared some of his secrets with me.”
Time and luck are important ingredients
Starting a truffle farm isn't nearly as complicated as growing major crops like corn or soy: just get a few acres and a few oak or hazelnut trees inoculated with the fungus that produces truffles, and you're good to go .
But time and luck play a big role. Truffles don't emerge from tree roots until more than a decade after planting, and the wrong kind of soil or too many competing fungal species in the soil can destroy truffle crops.
“It should come as no surprise that producing truffles is difficult,” says Matthew Smith, a plant pathologist and truffle expert at the University of Florida. “The Earth is teeming with biodiversity that we don't really understand.”
Smith says the key to a truffle infestation is to ensure that once the seedlings are planted they bring in the only fungus, and ideally using soil with a very high pH level so that it is harder for rival fungi to thrive .
But both the potential financial windfall and the sheer pleasure of the hunt seem to be luring newcomers into the truffle hobby, causing attendance at truffle festivals and truffle dog training courses to skyrocket.
“We started the Napa Truffle Festival 10 years ago, and it has grown from something small to a one-day $500-per-person event,” said Robert Chang, also co-founder of American Truffle Co. , a truffle supplier that manages dozens of farms in 25 countries.
Chang is a former Yahoo executive whose company has gone the high-tech route, using truffle farm data ranging from soil temperature to solar radiation to boost its chances of success.
“For centuries it has been the blind leading the blind, but with the help of technology you can amplify the success stories,” he says.
One thing technology can't do is find the truffles. For that you need a trained dog – and that's where Alana McGee comes into the picture. McGee runs the Seattle-based Truffle Dog Co., and her quarterly classes regularly sell out within days.
“It's really based on personality,” says McGee, who says you don't need Lagotto Romagnolo to find truffles. "We've trained huskies, Bernese Mountain Dogs and even Chihuahuas. It's not just about catching the scent, it's about not being distracted by squirrels."
A truffle or just a gopher den?
Spending an afternoon with Malone—along with his Lagotto puppy Lia, as well as his partner, Alexander Valley Truffle Co. farmer Seth Angerer, and his dogs Leo and puppy Vito—reveals just how much patience goes into finding a truffle.
The dogs work tirelessly for hours around the 10-hectare plot. Sometimes they claw at one spot. A single determined scratch in the surface near the trunk of small trees is a good sign, while furious digging probably means the dog is tunneling after a gopher.
“You start it when they're puppies, you hide little pieces of truffles around the house, and when they find one you reward them,” says Malone, whose dog Lia is still sensitive to distraction.
In contrast, Leo is not fascinated by his fellow teeth or other distractions in the rolling orchard. Nose down, he circles and circles until suddenly a right paw scrapes intensely into the ground and he looks up.
Malone throws back his baseball cap and digs his own nose into the rich clay.
“It smells like truffles,” he says, before getting to work himself. Within minutes he has what looks like a large lump of earth in his hand. But the smell – sharp, earthy and almost overpowering – is unmistakable.
He wipes away a layer of dirt and then hits the rock-hard mold with a jet of water from a hose. The Earth disappears, revealing a dented, scented moonstone. Malone grins.
"Somewhere," he says, running his hand over the horizon, "a chef will be very happy."
Follow USA TODAY national correspondent @marcodellacava
