The two predominant truffle species that have captured the world’s imagination are the White Italian Alba (T. magnatum) and the French Black Perigord (T. melanosporum). Truffle farms (known as ‘trufferies’) have been springing up all over Tasmania during the last few years, and now anyone can buy an inoculated tree infected with either the black or white truffle. The white truffle is grown on the roots of the poplar tree.
‘The French said we couldn’t grow wine, either,’ laughs Tim Terry. Terry is a Tasmanian entrepreneur expanding his current business into producing truffles for the commercial market. While deep-sea fishing with a friend off Tasman Island years ago, a conversation about truffle farming planted the seed in Terry’s mind. ‘It had never been done before, as far as we knew, in the Southern Hemisphere,’ he explains. ‘I now know that that’s because it’s too bloody hard!’
That it’s too hard hasn’t stopped Terry, who grew Australia’s first truffle in 1999, and has been running his truffle business for thirteen years. Terry formed Tasmanian Truffle Enterprises following the explosion of global interest in the potential for farming truffles in the Southern Hemisphere. ‘I realised this could be a commercially viable industry,’ he says. Producing truffles has taken Terry to France, for research into farming methods, several times. It has also made him something of an expert in dog training.
Askrigg, Terry’s 120-hectare property, houses some 19,000 trees over 33 hectares of cultivated plantation: 15,000 hazelnuts and 4000 oaks. The main house doubles as Terry’s office, and on his desk sits Australia’s first truffle, proudly cast in bronze.
With the help of a government grant, Terry has invested a great deal into monitoring conditions on his property. Probes in the ground measure rainfall and the depth of its penetration – an important factor influencing whether truffles will flourish. A truffle is almost always found, according to Terry, in the first 10 centimetres of earth around the base of a tree. Heavy rains at the wrong times adversely affect production, as truffles rot in the ground in excess moisture, or may not grow at all if the soil is too wet or cold.
Terry understands truffle faming better than anyone in Australia, but at the same time his confidence is riddled with the inconsistency of his truffle finds. ‘I don’t know why some trees consistently produce truffles and others don’t,’ Terry admits, pointing out a particular row of trees on his property that have produced more truffles than any other row, without any obvious feature that might contribute to their success.