He may joke that he sniffs dirt for a living, but truffle hunter Damon Boorman is part of a new culinary tradition celebrating the birth of the state’s commercially viable truffle industry.
He may joke that he sniffs dirt for a living, but truffle hunter Damon Boorman is part of a new culinary tradition celebrating the birth of the state's commercially viable truffle industry.
The first weekend in June marks the opening of Western Australia's three-month truffle season, with celebrations marking the first truffle of the year mirroring a similar tradition in Europe.
Truffle harvesting is a delicate process, with trained truffle dogs sniffing out the prized fungus buried beneath the ground, sometimes up to two feet below the surface, at the root of the host tree.
Almost 10 years after it planted its first oak and hazelnut trees, Manjimup's The Wine and Truffle Co is expecting to harvest more than 600 kilograms of the Perigord black truffle this year.
It's a far cry from its first harvest in 2003, which yielded just one truffle, the first for Manjimup.
Managing director Wally Edwards said his truffles matched the quality of the premium French truffle, but were generally larger than those produced in France, thanks to ongoing research by the company's truffle consultant, Dr Nicholas Malajczuk.
"We think in the long term that science will be the key issue," he said.
In addition to the 21 hectares of trees planted at its Hazel Hill property, and 12ha of grapes, The Wine and Truffle Co is also a major shareholder in the Oak Valley Truffle project three kilometres down the road.
Starting out as a managed investment scheme two year ago, 60ha of trees have been planted at Oak Valley, which will eventually be increased to 74ha.
With global demand unmet by diminishing supplies from traditional producers, including France and Italy, truffles currently fetch about $3,000 a kilo on the retail market.
The Wine and Truffle Co allocated about a quarter of its total production to the domestic food service market, with the remainder exported to Japan, Hong Kong, Indonesia (Bali), the US and Europe.
The company also produces a range of value-added truffle products, including truffle honey, truffle butter, truffle aioli and truffle oil.
Manjimup is the largest producer of truffles by volume in Australia, with younger truffieries established in the cooler areas of Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania.
