Maurizio Lorenzini’s leather European carry-all was grease stained. The famous truffle hunter was, otherwise, impeccably put together in freshly pressed head-to-toe camo, so the greasy satchel really caught my eye. When I met Maurizio in the hills outside Bologna 10 years ago, truffle season was in full swing and I was eager to see how he tracked down this wild fungus in the damp forests around the village of Savigno—and I wanted the story behind that bag.
For years I had been hearing about Maurizio and his knack for finding the region’s best truffles, and I knew he had honed the craft alongside his father-in-law, foraging celebrity Adriano Bartolini. It didn’t come as a surprise, then, that truffle hunting in Emilia-Romagna is a family business. So many Italian artisans I had met—from carpenters to cheesemongers—carried on a multi-generational tradition. Why would truffle hunting be any different? What I didn’t know, until I met Maurizio and Adriano, was that the rule applied to animals, too.
On that damp day in October, Maurizio, Adriano, and I made the muddy trek into the forest with their dogs, Macchia and Pupa—daughter and mother. Just as Maurizio had learned from Adriano, so, too, had Macchia learned from Pupa. The four-member team was known across the region for their prowess in tracking down the finest truffles. The dogs, Lagotto Romagnolos, are naturally predisposed hunters. The breed has a keen sense of smell and an intense loyalty to their masters. It didn’t hurt that Maurizio and Adriano knew just how to motivate their canines.
As we walked through the woods, Macchia and Pupa would stop in their tracks—nose to the ground—when they sensed a truffle. Then they would start digging, kicking up leaves and dirt as they excavated. Macchia, the younger of the two, was especially energetic. Maurizio would crouch down and put his face next to her paws and whisper, “Dov’e’, Macchia?” (Where is it, Macchia?) When he thought she had dug far enough, he would pull her away by her collar and use a kind of flat, dull blade tethered to a stick to prod the earth. He would sniff a bit of the dirt and, if he thought there was a whole truffle down there, he would dig it up. If, instead, he sensed only a spore, he would re-cover it to let it grow. Either way, he’d pull a couple of mortadella cubes from his satchel and feed them to whichever dog led him to the spot. The dogs who worked for salami were the reason for the greasy bag.