EARTHY PLEASURES

Musky, savoury, mysterious there's nothing quite like black truffle, writes FIONA DONNELLY. Follow your nose and start celebrating the arrival of the Australian season.

- FIONA DONNELLY

Remember the last time you experienced black truffle? Not the overpowering odour of chemically derived truffle oil.

But the heady, forest-floor fragrance of native European tuber melanosporum, the Périgord truffle. Or as it's known when cultivated here, the Australian black truffle.

Now, try and put your sense memory into words. Struggling to find descriptors? You're not alone. Humans have been savouring truffles for three millennia, yet it's still no easier to sum up the appeal.

"What does a truffle smell like? That's probably the hardest question to answer," says Gavin Booth of Australian Truffle Traders. Booth and wife Mel are some of Australia's most experienced growers. The pair started out in the industry training dogs to hunt truffles and fell for the lifestyle. Their Southern Forests truffière sits in Western Australia's truffle country, Manjimup, 300 kilometres south of Perth.

"It all starts when you kneel down in the orchard," Booth says. "The truffle wants to be found - that aroma. I still find myself saying each season, even after 15 years, 'God, this is just so good'. It's a primeval odour which hits you below the diaphragm."

Black truffle is the underground fruit of a specialised fungi. The fungi live on the roots of host trees (usually oaks and hazel) and create tangled networks of mycelium which produce truffle fruit - but only when conditions are just right.

During Australia's June to September truffle season, the Booth family's four highly skilled labradors do the hard yards, locating the ripest truffles buried beneath the trees. But the dogs aren't the only ones with a nose. Booth says depending on the stage of the growth cycle he can detect aroma notes ranging from book leather, Vegemite and beetroot to plum jam, ripe cheese and roast meats.