Truffle #348, first spotted on 22 February 2016 in the first wave of covering near surface truffles, I had no idea of the actual size until late last Thursday when I was protecting truffles against the 21 Celsius day. The ripening aroma’s being released made Lani mark the truffle enthusiastically, and I/we started digging… deeper, … and deeper. Some 45 minutes later it was finally extracted from the ground. It was then cleaned, and air dried overnight.
I’ve had a lot of large truffles this year, many 4 to 5 hundred grams, with some noteable specimens including 630g & 800g. But this one weighed in at 1511 grams!
Being a Thursday, it was a bit late in the week for marketing, and none of my regular customers could handle a truffle of this size. Other buyers could have been found, but there’s been a lot of “we’ll call you” responses from restaurants this year, so I decided I’d rather preserve it instead.
5 grams does a bottle of truffle vodka, so it’s big enough to infuse 210 litres (44gallon drum), although it will more likely be used for future promotional activities.
It’s certainly more satisfying to be able to keep (and show) it, than simply be saying “I once had a truffle that was…”