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Every day, a link to Languedoc Living
appears in my Inbox, providing a useful compendium in English of news, event
listings, and feature articles concentrating on our region but including a
taste of the rest of France, Europe, and the world. I give the site a thorough
look as often as time permits. Recently, I learned that the season for truffle
fairs had arrived. Is it any surprise that my wife Cathey knew this? The
surprise, I suppose, is that I realized that Cathey would be interested and that
I proposed without any prodding that we pay a visit the truffle fair in
Villeneuve Minervois, a small town in the foothills of the Massif Central about an hour north and west of us here in Quarante.
We arrived at the salle polyvalente (community room) at about 10am. Just about every village has one of these multi-purpose spaces. Villeneuve Minervois’ sports a kitchen and a stage at the edges of a basketball court downstairs and what appeared to be classrooms/meeting rooms upstairs. A market was already in full swing. Tables displaying wine, artisan whisky, saffron and saffron-infused products, truffle-infused butter and brie, artisan chocolate and cheeses and sausages, and knives and other gadgets with points and edges were arranged in an outward-facing square on the floor of the court. After a quick circuit and tastings, we had purchased two bottles of sparkling Limoux wine and a couple of hunks of chocolate, both white and dark, both with bits of raspberries. I thoroughly enjoyed my sip of Black Mountain, very smooth artisan whiskey. No sale, though. I’m a bourbon man myself.
But the reason for the festivities are the truffles. I won’t
bother defining what truffles are or describing their culinary importance. If
you don’t know, you can look it up. I will simply say two things: that we are
talking here about the French black winter truffle, tuber mélanosporum, and that if you enjoy mushrooms, truffles are
kind of like mushrooms to the nth degree. Truffles are a gourmet’s delight. At
a cooking demonstration under a small tent with perhaps 50 chairs lined up, the
audience was standing room only.
The truffle foragers arrive with their musky little
treasures in baskets, in glass jars, or in plastic containers. They present
their finds to an examiner stationed by the entrance, in this case a youngish
man casually dressed in jeans, and his female assistant. They represent the
French Department of Agriculture as well as the local Brotherhood of the
Truffle. The examiner assesses every single truffle, sharp knife in hand,
trimming them as needed, carefully shaving and smelling. If the truffle passes
muster, it goes in a bin on the examiner’s scale. If it doesn’t, it’s added to
a pile of rejects under the examiner’s table. There may be some discussion
concerning a rejection, but the discussion is always civil and the examiner’s
judgment is final. The assistant writes down the forager’s name by hand in a
simple, lined notebook and, when the examiner is finished, writes down the combined
weight of the forager’s approved truffles. The truffles are then placed in a
cloth bag, tied securely, sealed, and handed back to the forager.
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The foragers took their approved hauls to a long table at
one end of the hall, separated from the crowd by a waist-high rope. A gent with
a rifle, one of the Brothers, patrolled the stage above. When all of the day’s
truffles had been examined, very close to the appointed hour of 11am, the
examiner walked down the line to each forager’s station, cutting open the seals
of the cloth bags and pouring the contents into whatever display container that
the forager had set up. Some of the forager’s displays were quite fancy. Some foragers
simply used the plastic containers that their truffles had arrived in. Every
station had its own scale. When the examiner had opened and poured out the last
bag, and without any warning, the Brother on the stage fired off a loud blank. (I
hope that it was a blank.) The rope dropped. The stampede began.
I knew then why there had been such a crowd around the
examiner’s station by the door. Folks who were intent on buying were scoping
out the batches that they thought looked the best, watching and listening to
the examiner. So when the rope dropped, they hustled to purchase the truffles
that they’d targeted. We weren’t so focused. We simply walked up to the lady at
one end of the table with just a dozen or so mostly small truffles sitting on
the lid of a plastic container, watched the two ladies ahead of us pick up and
smell each and every one of her truffles before purchasing two, then repeated
the exercise for ourselves, picking out one small truffle of 14 grams that she
put in a little cellophane bag for us. 11 Euros. That’s right. 11 Euros for a
fresh French winter truffle weighing one-half ounce. We were amazed. We would
have paid at least four times as much in the States, probably more. At that
price, we could afford another. We were more discriminating. We walked down the
table slowly, eying each display. We
liked that of a forager displaying deep black truffles in a cute little basket
lined with red fabric. We picked out another truffle. 16 grams. 12 Euros. Damn.
One final note. Cathey rhapsodized over the smell of
truffles that she said pervaded the salle
polyvalente. I frankly didn’t
notice it. But when friends popped by our house the day after the fair for a
visit to set a luncheon date in order to introduce us to their favorite local
restaurant, Cathey brought out the jar and opened it to give them a whiff. And
from the other end of the table the fragrance of the truffles wafted over to
me. Unmistakable.
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