A 'record' black truffle weighing
1.79 kg was found by truffle hound Pepe near the source of the
Tiber in Umbria Saturday night, the truffle hunter said Sunday.
The valuable tuber was the biggest ever discovered by Romolo
Lazzari, 79, in more than 50 years of hunting the delicacy.
"I've never seen anything like it in all these years," he told
reporters.
"I couldn't believe my eyes.
"It's not me who should get the credit, but Pepe, my
six-year-old bloodhound."
The find was made in the woods near Città di Castello, an
Umbrian town known for its museum housing works by Raphael,
Luca Signorelli, Andrea della Robbia, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Domenico
Ghirlandaio, and others.
In December 2021 Italian truffle hunting made it
onto the UNESCO list of the world's intangible cultural
heritage, a UNESCO panel announced in Paris.
Practitioners of the traditional practice put in their bid eight
years previously.
Farm group Coldiretti said the accolade "is an important step
towards defending a system marked by a special relationship with
nature in a rite that is rich with anthropological and cultural
aspects.
"It is a tradition that is decisive for many mountain rural
areas which are disadvantaged from the tourist and gastronomic
standpoints".
The art of truffle hunting, Coldiretti said, involves a network
of around 73,600 practictioners, called 'tartufai', organised
into 45 groups in a national federation ranging from 44,000
individual tartufai to 20,000 'free searchers'.
Truffle hunting, Coldiretti said, joins Sicilian puppetry
(2008), Tenor singing (2000), the Med diet (2010), Cremonese
violin making (2012), processional shoulder-borne machines
(2013) and Neapolitan pizza makers (2017) on the UNESCO roll of
honour.
Other Italian treasures to be so honoured include falconry,
dry-stone walling, the Prosecco Hills, and the beech woods of
Aspromonte, the farmers' group said.
Gastronomes and enthusiasts of the prized and pungent fungus
known as the white truffle had a great 2021 season with prices
rising to record levels due to a COVID-linked scarcity.
The most prestigious truffles are found mostly in the
Piedmont region near the town of Alba, where a yearly fair
celebrating and auctioning the culinary treasure takes place.
White truffles are more pungent, rare and expensive than
black ones, which have a longer growing season and are more
common in the center and south of Italy.
On November 11, 2021, the annual World Truffle Auction at the
Grinzane Cavour castle outside of Alba once again attracted
tycoons from all over the world to contend for the most valued
tubers on the market that season.
Nestling in the roots of about 50 trees - mostly oaks
but also hazels, poplars, mulberries and willows - truffles
are rooted out by specially trained dogs.
With demand shooting up over recent years, hunters have
become increasingly competitive and there have even been
reports of skulduggery such as hamstringing or even poisoning
the champion dogs of rivals.
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