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Truffle farm puts down roots in Rixeyville
Virginia Truffle Growers in Culpeper grows and sells trees inoculated with truffles.You're probably familiar with chocolate truffles. They're the namesake of the edible fungi that originally bore the name (some people mistakenly think truffles are mushrooms) and were crafted to resemble their free form. Apart from that, chocolate truffles and fungi truffles bear no connection to one another.
Fungi truffles (from here on I'll just be calling them truffles) are highly prized, frightfully expensive culinary punctuations to glorious haute cuisine. A smidgeon goes a long way in providing the earthy, rich, mushroom-y flavor that beckons them from forest to table. If you didn't know what they were and saw them in a gourmet shop, you'd pass up the shriveled, little black (or sometimes white) masses of fungus every time but, once you've tasted truffles, they'll haunt you forever.
Truffles traditionally come from Europe (France in particular) where they're gathered in the wild. Carefully trained pigs are used to sniff them out in the forests. Truffle farming is rare in Europe.
With acid rain and pollution devastating European forests and fuel costs to fly the highly perishable truffles to our shores escalating, wild truffles are becoming scarce. This scarcity, coupled with increasing demands for truffles, is pushing European prices through the roof.
Seizing the opportunity to cash in and bring truffle farming, with its consistently demonstrated, predictably good yields to Virginia, Pat and John Martin teamed up with Maggie Shumack and Tim Terry. After a long search for the right property, the Martins purchased a tract of land in Rixeyville, near Culpeper for their truffiere (pronounced truf-er-ree).
"You've got the right climate and the right ground here [in the Piedmont]," says Australian native Shumack who met the Martins 10 years ago in Singapore where they all happened to be working ? Pat for Fuji-Xerox, John in the semiconductor industry and Maggie as an independent contractor specializing in project management.
The trio became fast friends and teamed up with truffle impresario and fellow Australian Tim Terry, who is managing director of the firm, "Truffles, Australis."
"Tim knows everything about truffles," Shumack said. "He's been farming them in Australia for 15 years, and we'll be partnering with him."
Virginia Truffle Growers (VTG) sells oak saplings that are inoculated with certified Perigord black truffle spores imported from France. Perigord truffles are considered the finest in the world.
The trees are grown in a sterile, greenhouse environment (so there's no contamination from wild fungus) at their farm in Rixeyville from acorns sourced in the States. After inoculation with the Perigord spores, the trees are certified by a mycologist to verify that they do,, in fact contain spores capable of producing Perigord truffles.
Using VTG methods of planting, irrigating and pruning, you can count on a beginning harvest of truffles in four years. After that, the truffles reproduce with abandon, promising healthy harvests year after year.
"It's the perfect [agricultural] business for retirees," said Shumack. "Once the orchard is planted, there's very little maintenance except for mowing the grass around the trees and occasionally pruning. It's a wonderful companion business for wineries, too, since truffles are harvested after the grapes."
Setting up a truffle "orchard" is much like creating a park, they say. "We're with you every step of the way ? from site selection and installation to harvesting. We'll even buy your crop," Shumack said. VTG expects to offer truffle distribution and sales for its producers through a related company.
"And we'll sell every truffle we can lay our hands on," said Pat Martin who, along with her husband,
retired from corporate life to import and distribute Australian wines.
"We get to talk to a lot of chefs who say they'll buy all the truffles we can bring them. Imported truffles
are so hard to get and when you find them, they're extremely expensive. Locally grown truffles have so
much appeal. They're fresher, probably better and will be competitively priced."
VTG has everything so well mapped out that you don't even have to worry about training pigs to sniff
out your truffles for harvesting. While pigs are used in France, VTG recommends using dogs to sniff out the underground bounty. "Any [breed of] dog that shows an interest in hunting truffles can be trained," Shumack said, "and if your dog has no interest, our related company, Virginia Truffle Sales and Marketing, expects to have trained dogs ready to assist with harvesting."
Their excitement and commitment to their fledgling enterprise was so infectious that it's easy to get swept up into their enthusiasm.
Shumack oversees the day-to-day nuts and bolts of the nursery operation. The Martins will handle
distribution. Terry, the technical expertise.
When I asked how they got into the truffle farming business, Shumack went to the freezer and produced
a plastic bag containing some of their home grown truffles.
"Smell," she said, opening the bag so I could take a good whiff. I buried my nose in the contents. A
rich, earthy, lush fragrance wafted to my nose, filling my senses with the elemental nuisances of the
Piedmont. It was easy to see how they got hooked.
"We love them in all kinds of food," said Martin, "we've even made truffle ice cream. Very unusual, like chilled cream of mushroom soup….only better!"
Martin and Shumack explained that truffles are used sparingly and shaved into food. The intensity of the flavor requires only a bit of truffle in recipes. Often, they're infused into oil which makes the flavor go
farther. That's good because they said the current retail price for quality black truffles is $1,500 per
pound.
For prospective truffle farmers, Terry will be coming from Australia to host a field day at the truffiere on Friday, Oct. 10. Space is limited.
"We want to spend a lot of quality time with each prospective truffle farmer so we can start them off
right," said Maggie Shumack.
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