Pietra Marazzi (Italy) (AFP) – “The moon is perfect and yet I only found two small ones last night”: in the misty hills of Italian Piedmont, the precious truffles are slow to arrive after a too dry summer.

Published on: 04/11/2026 - 08:53

Giuseppe Esposito, 69, "toured for 4 or 5 hours" with his curly Attila, a 7-year-old Romagna water dog, in the undergrowth around Pietra Marazzi, near Alexandria, one of the truffle-rich areas of northern Italy.

The autumn black truffle season opened at the beginning of October but remains very disappointing. “This night, I had the perfect moon, in a waning gibbous (after the full moon, editor’s note). But I only found two small truffles,” regrets this experienced “trifolau” (caveur in Piedmontese dialect).

In these corners that he doesn't even share with his wife, "it should have rained in July or August", but the summer of 2026 was the hottest ever recorded in Piedmont, with peaks of 40°C at the end of July.

Truffle harvesting is an important tradition in the Italian countryside, recognized by Unesco. It is also, often, a source of additional income (untaxed up to 7,000 euros per year, with truffles ranging from 800 to 4,000 euros per kilo) for farmers or former hunters, like Giuseppe Esposito.

The majority of truffles now come from truffle plantations or cultivated truffle farms, where trees have been planted after having been mycorrhized (their roots have been bathed in a truffle-based slurry to combine the fungus).

In his woods in Pietra Marazzi, Marco Boido, 49, a truffle trader and restaurateur in Alexandria, is also disappointed and worried: "We started the season in a terrible way, we are at less than 50% production (...). This year, they are much smaller, and more fragrant, it's true."

“If this drought continues, there will always be fewer in our area, which is the AOC of truffles, it will move to other regions,” predicts Marco Boido.

Shifted calendar

"The truffle is like a sponge. All those that should have arrived from July to today have not come out: the black autumn one, the mesenteric one...", confirms Fabio Cerretano, president of the federation of wine cellar associations. He estimates the number at 120,000 in Italy, around 10% of whom make a living from it.

The Piedmont region has already delayed the opening of the season since 2024 “because of ongoing climate change.”

The black truffle is to be joined in November by the prestigious white truffle, with a season of fairs and auctions, particularly around Alba in Piedmont.

“For the precious white truffle, this year, the music sounds out of tune,” says one of the cavers who works for Marco Boido in Lazio (center), and who wished to remain anonymous.

"But the whole calendar has been shifted: in the past, at the beginning of October, you already had the dogs marking on the poplars and lime trees along the ditches, while this year we had to wait until the end of the month to see the first beautiful pieces. The unseasonal heat has dried up the banks of the streams and the wettest valleys."

“Where, on the contrary, we had better truffles, it was in the steeper and cooler mountain valleys, where the humidity held,” testifies another winemaker in Umbria. “The fragrance is exceptional and the consistency is very firm, which keeps prices high on the market.”

For several years, Italy has also faced competition from truffles in Spain, where farmers have planted huge truffle groves and cut costs.

The Italian government tried again in 2025 to reform the world of truffles, to promote production in truffle farms. But the bill faced clear opposition from traditional “trifolau” and remains blocked in the Senate.

In Piedmont, Giuseppe says he is crazy about this tradition and the relationship with his dog. "The emotion is stronger than when I went hunting. The adrenaline when the hare starts, yes, it's beautiful. But when you smell the scent of the truffle, the dog starts to dig, and he stands there and doesn't let go, you see him tiring but continuing to dig... you get goosebumps."

© 2026 AFP

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