Oliveto co-owner Bob Klein and General Manager Shane Walker depart in less than a week for Italy to gather white truffles for our upcoming dinners. We’ve already heard some preliminary reports about the start of the season from a few of our contacts.
Bad news first: Our friend Aldo Vacca in the Piedmont says the weather has been very dry and very hot.
BUT he also says the truffles he has seen so far are small but high quality and just recently, the weather has turned and it has started raining. That is definitely GOOD news.
In Tuscany, our truffle hunter Giorgio is saying much of the same.
If you want to follow along, we encourage you to bookmark this page or add it to your RSS feed as we will be posting videos and dispatches live from the hunt.
We were in Italy the last two weeks of September and I was horribly disappointed that the weather had not cooperated. After dinner on our last night in Venice we found that there was one, count it, one restaurant that did have white truffles (for a $30 upcharge) but it had not been widely known. The black truffle had been widely available when we were in Slovenia but we saw none of that even in Italy.
So pleased that you are doing your dinners again this year!!!!!
Janet-marie