Every Year, This Truffle Festival in Oregon Goes to the Dogs
Truffle hunters in Eugene have a secret sniffing weapon.
In 2018, there was a major upset at the Joriad North American Truffle Dog Championship in Eugene, arguably the most popular part of the Oregon Truffle Festival (this year happening on February 17). A wiry-haired rescue Chihuahua mix named Gustave snagged the top honors. Nobody could’ve seen it coming: Though the tiny tri-colored pup had made it far into the competition before, getting to the final-round this year proved to be difficult. Gustave was easily distracted—by applause, by other dogs, by crowds screaming in delight at this serious-faced sniffer in a puffy orange vest. But, apparently, one with a flair for drama. In the second round, where the goal is to dig up tubes of truffle-scented cotton balls scattered around the Lane County Horse Arena, he dilly-dallied, waiting for the last moment possible before he scratched the ground, indicating a find. Suspense!
Gustave had made it to the third and final round, but the odds were stacked. This event was an actual hunt for white truffles (tuber oregonense) out in the forests of Oregon, something he’d never done, up against four other dogs including a mop-topped Lagotto Romagnolo, adorable, but intimidating: a breed that for centuries has been bred to do the thing. And it was January, the height of truffle season in the forests of Oregon’s Willamette Valley, meaning wet, and cold. For a Chihuahua, it’s downright freezing. Gustave shivered out in the forest, unfocused, his puffy vest no match for the elements.
But then, as documented in Rowan Jacobson’s book Truffle Hound, his handler, Marcy Tippmann, put a second coat on him. And a warmer Gustave was good to go, zeroing in with precision on the bulbous treasures latched to the roots of Oregon’s state tree, the Douglas firs. “He’s this little dog and it takes him a little teeny bit longer to dig, but he’s super fast,” recalls Leslie Scott, who with her husband, mycologist Charles Lefevre, co-founded the truffle festival in 2006 to bring attention to Oregon’s growing truffle industry. “He's just this little machine: dig up a truffle, get a treat, dig up a truffle, get a treat. He was so treat motivated.”
Gustave ended up with a haul of 17 of Oregon’s exquisite white truffles. Second place was a distant 10 found by a black Lab named Ciaran. It was a triumph not just for the sheer numbers, or because he was an adorable winner, but also because it was truly a testament that any dog could do it. (Except maybe bird dogs. “They’re trained to look up, so any noise in a tree, or in the sky, their nose goes straight up,” says Scott.)
And that’s pretty important. Because without truffle hunting dogs—a variety of truffle hunting dogs—there would be no Oregon truffle industry.
Ancient Greeks believed that truffles were the heaven-sent product of a thunderbolt launched to Earth by Zeus. The truth is more practical, but perhaps just as magical. Unlike other mushrooms, whose fruit are easily spotted above ground, truffles—of which there are hundreds of species—are subterranean sequesterers, spores enclosed in a protective coat called a peridium, latching in a symbiotic relationship onto the roots of oaks, hazelnuts, and firs. There are three main types: the white truffle, or Alba (tuber mangatum) typically found in Italy, and the most expensive food in the world, sometimes commanding up to $3,000 a pound. The black truffle, or Perigord, is usually found in the region of France of the same name. She’ll run you $900 a pound. And the summer truffle, or Burgundy truffle (tuber uncinatum), the mildest-tasting and least expensive of the bunch, at $350 a pound.
But while truffles were once thought to be the exclusive luxury of these European places—and palates— the truth is, with the right conditions, these marbled delicacies can crop up anywhere. For sure, they’re still rare in the US: 97% of truffle-growing attempts over here fail, in sites from California to the Appalachians to Tennessee. Also working against would-be harvesters is time: the tubers themselves take almost a decade to reach peak production. But for those with a vision and stars in their eyes, it’s a minor obstacle.
Oregon truffles grow exclusively on the roots of the Douglas fir, a tree typically farmed for timber and Christmas trees. (Truffles in Oregon were uncovered by accident, on an abandoned Christmas tree farm.) Now these private farms, many initially planted in desperation to make money, have yielded a second lucrative form of income, and new fungi ecosystems.
But to get the most out of truffles, you have to know how to harvest them. For years, the Oregon truffle was thought to be of subpar quality, simply because humans were raking them up all at once in clumps before they had time to ripen, rendering them almost tasteless. Hunters would look for a dark patch of ground called brûlée—French for burnt, like crème brûlée—which indicates that the truffle has asphyxiated all the vegetation around them (they tend to do that). They would sniff them, but our noses aren’t keen enough to get the job done.
And that’s where man’s best friend comes in.
But first, the pig. Whether or not you’ve tasted a truffle, there are probably a few things you know about them. They’re rare, for one. And expensive. And they’re thought to be natural aphrodisiacs. Napoleon used them increase his potency, and Lord Byron kept them around for... sniffing. The Marquis de Sade seduced his conquests with them. And while many so-called natural aphrodisiacs are bunk, there may be some truth to this one. The original truffle hunting pets were female pigs, because it was something she would have done anyway. Especially if she were looking for a mate.
Truffles contain androstenol, a pheromone also produced in the saliva of male boars (and the armpits of male humans). And it's a hell of a cologne to a lady pig. It’s by design: truffles depend on animals to root them up and disperse the spores. And it's probably how we even learned of the existence of truffles in the first place, way back in the Bronze age or even earlier: Forlorn female pigs went rooting in search of would-be lovers, only to be disappointed when she pulled up a knobby fungus.
And so, she would eat it. Enthusiastically. Try to wrestle it away and you might lose a finger or two. And some truffle hunters did. (If you ever run into a hunter that uses a pig, count their fingers.) To save their digits, truffle hunters switched to dogs, training their keen sense of smell to spot the fungi. There are a few benefits, besides the finger thing: Dogs are much smaller, stealthier, and easier to control than pigs. Nobody will know or care about your business if you’re toting a dog around in your Subaru. Take your pig out for a walk in the forest, however, and people begin to suspect something’s up.
And there’s the rest of the year when it’s not truffle season. Dogs are easy to integrate into everyday life. Pigs, not so much (though Nic Cage in the movie Pig would probably disagree). And when it comes to harvesting dogs may eat a few truffles here or there, but their main motivation is to please their owner. Will work for pats. Or treats. Okay, mostly treats.
The first working truffle dogs were the curly-topped Lagotto Romagnolos, a water dog tracing back to the 16th century in Italy, originally bred for retrieving ducks from the marshes of Romagna. With training, its attentiveness and intelligence were easily transferred to decadent fungi. In 2008, two Lagottos, Tom and Lussi, were brought to the US from Italy for truffle-hunting purposes in the trufferie of Tennessee’s upscale Blackberry Farm. They’ve since sired a small army of sniffers spread across the country. Expensive sniffers. One of their pups will run you $8,500 to $10,000.
A goal of the Oregon Truffle Festival is to emphasize that while you probably do need a dog to be a successful truffle hunter, you don’t need to blow your bank account on a Lagotto to get in on the fun, and maybe even fortune. Hey, just look at Gustave! The OTF offers access without the price tag: In the non-COVID past, it included a truffle dog training for your pup— any pup—with lessons by animal whisperer Jim Sanford of Blackberry Farm. Then try your luck in the truffle dog competition. A $50 entry fee gets you a possible payout of $500.
Another goal of the festival is exposure. The Oregon truffle is already coveted by high-end chefs in the Pacific Northwest, but beyond the region, it’s less known. The festival aims to change that, thereby stimulating the rural economy. “The festival is a nonprofit and we’re purpose-driven about creating an industry in Oregon that would benefit so many smaller communities that need visitors and resources in the shoulder season,” says Scott. “As good as our wine is and our chefs are, people are not usually gonna travel here in the winter.”
The fledgling nature of the industry and egalitarian stance of the festival means that it’s also much more laid back than one, say, in old-world Europe. Here they’re intent on education, exposure, and interest, which in turn would create demand. And it’s working. “We have some people who come to the truffle festival as total foodies who are now in the truffle dog business,” says Scott. “We have so many converts either harvesting for themselves, harvesting to sell to chefs, chefs who are doing their own culinary thing.” When the festival started in 2006, Oregon truffles were $60 a pound. Now, they’re $600.
But beyond economics the festival also includes all sorts of fun. In a typical non-COVID year there would be seminars, and a marketplace with cooking demonstrations, truffle dog demos, tastings, and infused products and wine. “We’ve had truffle beer and truffle vodka,” says Scott. “That was another goal, to help catalyze seasonal artisan food industries for small and specialty food producers.”
There are also dinners where chefs go wild with the umami ingredient, throwing together everything from truffle-stuffed quail to black truffle-cured smoked salmon to desserts like truffle baked Alaska and truffle brie cheesecake for dessert. Paired, of course, with plenty of Willamette Valley wine.
And there’s a parade, where no dog competing in the truffle dog competition goes uncelebrated. “We give a trophy along with the $500 prize, but we invite everyone who entered to parade their dog,” says Scott. “We call out the name of the dog owner, and the name of the dog, and breed.”
It’s so inclusive that if you brought a pig, they’d probably celebrate that, too. Just watch your fingers.