Truffle war looms in Italy’s Piedmont

Piedmont is famous for white Alba truffles and wine but conflict is on the horizon between their respective producers.

Climate change and increasingly high summer temperatures are forcing winemakers in Piedmont’s hilly Langhe region to seek shade for their vines.

Members of Consortium for the Protection of Barolo and Barbaresco for the emblematic red wines are looking with new interest at northern slopes but these are the zones that yield Piedmont’s rare white truffles, which can fetch between €2,000 and €6,000 a kilo.

Until now there has been no conflict between truffles and winemakers, not least because these north-facing expanses of woodland and meadows were considered too cool for wine growing.

But as Spain’s winemakers are beginning to realise, together with their counterparts across Europe, ever-higher temperatures are obliging growers to contemplate a change of habits.

In Piedmont this would involve extending vineyards to areas formerly dismissed as unsuitable. Practically untouched for centuries, these are jealously guarded by the hunters and their dogs who locate the prized Alba truffles which cannot be cultivated and can only be unearthed.

“Opening up north-facing slopes to grape production would pose a grave threat to truffles,” said Antonio Degiacomi, president of the National Centre for Truffle Studies which is based in Alba (Piedmont).

“All the biodiversity of the region is concentrated on the northern slopes and without it there will be no truffles,” he told La Stampa newspaper.

Clearing the wooded northern slopes for vineyards would be a “lethal blow” to truffle hunters, Degiacomi continued.

“If this is allowed to go ahead, the famous white truffle of Alba will no longer exist,” he warned.