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Fungus Fight: N.C. woman takes on European market to make truffles a domestic commodity
AP Photo
Susan Rice, the founder of Black Diamond French Truffles Inc., holds black truffles grown on her farm near Vass, near Southern Pines.
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Published: July 23, 2008
In rural North Carolina, Susan Rice is planning her attack on the French.
Rice's strategy does not involve guns or soldiers. Instead, the assault is gastronomical. She started a 200-acre black-truffle "farm" in hopes of earning beaucoup d'argent (a lot of money) from the sale of the musky, earthy, aromatic fungi.
Truffles, which grow underground among the roots of trees, are prized by chefs and gourmands, but difficult to cultivate.
A pound of fresh French Perigord truffles can cost more than $1,500 retail, depending on the season. White truffles from the Alba region of Italy are even more expensive.
"We're trying to make it more of an American product, where we can enjoy it here," said Rice, the founder of Black Diamond French Truffles Inc., whose farm is near Vass, about 50 miles southwest of Raleigh.
For centuries, France, Italy and Spain have dominated the truffle market. That's in part because the spherical tubers only grow in moist soil in temperate climates and under specific trees, mainly hazelnut and oak. They don't always grow in the same place and are hard to find, even for dogs and pigs trained to sniff them out.
Alan Bergman, a chef and instructor at Johnson & Wales University in North Miami, Fla., recalls foraging for truffles in Europe. He said that people who have trees that produce truffles were known to blindfold visitors to keep locations secret.
Others tell stories about poachers, slayings of dogs by rivals and car-trunk deals where brown paper bags and wads of cash change hands in a thriving black market.
Bergman, who worked as a chef in London for several years, would lock his truffles in a drawer.
"Sometimes I would take them out just to look at them, then put them back," he said.
In America, the truffle has only recently wafted into popular food consciousness, which has become much more global with the popularity of cable food networks and the organic- and natural-foods revolution.
Brent Demarest, a produce buyer for Whole Foods Market, is interested in Rice's operation and, if the quality of the truffles is good, plans to sell the North Carolina truffles in its stores.
Rice is using money she made from her real-estate and timbering ventures to finance the project. She and her investors plan to pump $25 million into the farm.
The soil where the trees will grow has been adjusted to acquire the right acidity for truffles. And the 80,000 trees she is buying will be inoculated with the tuber melanosporum, the coveted Perigord truffle, from New World Truffieres Inc. in Eugene, Ore.
No truffles are expected to grow at the farm for another few years, but Rice already is getting a dog to begin exploring later this year.
If all goes as planned, the goal is to gross about $30,000 an acre in the next five years, and $100,000 an acre by year 10. Simple math results in a mouthwatering total: $20 million in annual sales for the 200-acre orchard in 10 years.
But Rice already has competition, and it's also in North Carolina. Keep Your Fork Farm in Stokes County planted filbert trees with black Perigord truffle fungus in October 2000 and harvested its first truffles in 2006.
Franklin Garland of Garland Truffles in Hillsborough harvested his first commercial truffle crop in 1992 and sold a yearly average of 50 pounds of truffles before his orchard was exhausted in 2002.
He is currently waiting for a 25-acre orchard to produce new fungi.
Garland, who estimates that there are 15 to 20 small truffle-producing orchards in the United States, said that such methods as raising the lime level in the soil have improved cultivation.
"It's farming now. It's not, ‘Plant trees and pray for truffles,"' Garland said.
The truffle market is expanding, experts say. Far-flung nations such as Australia and China produce truffles, and the worldwide demand has sent prices up a couple hundred dollars a pound over the past few years.
Bergman said that it could take a while for Americans to catch on, especially in the face of French dominance in the black truffle market.
"It's ingrained in their culture," Bergman said. "I'm not sure if it will become part of our culture that quickly."
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