Diary of a Shopkeeper, 16th November

Digging for buried treasure…what images that conjures up! A crew of pirates, maybe, digging down into the sand of some Caribbean island, uncovering an old sea chest stuffed with gold doubloons…

What if, instead, the buried treasure was a pale, shrivelled lump of fungus, looking like the brain of a long-dead giant mole? What if it was encrusted with dark woodland earth? What if the men who uncovered the treasure didn’t hold it up to the light so the gold glinted, but cupped it below their noses and took deep ecstatic sniffs? Then we wouldn’t have a fantastical pirate adventure story but reality: the reality of the truffle hunters of Piemonte in northwest Italy.

The West Side Cinema (jewel in the crown of Stromness) showed a film of that name last night: The Truffle Hunters, directed by Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw, and released in 2020. It was a documentary, in the sense that it was entirely about real people living their real, truffle-obsessed lives. But it was far more than a simple picture of reality. For a start, it was ravishingly beautiful to look at, like a Caravaggio painting. The cool natural light of the mountains lit the golden leaves of autumn oak forests. The truffle hunters’ homes were simple to the point of starkness, with bare wooden tables and cracked plaster walls – which nonetheless glowed in a chiaroscuro of lamplight and deep shadow.

The hunters themselves were not stereotypically beautiful people. They were men in their 70s or 80s, unshaven, in muddy, tattered clothes. They’d lived their lives scouring the hills and valleys in all seasons for their elusive treasure, and their faces bore the evidence of hard labour and bad weather. They were all, with once exception, single. Well, single as in not in a relationship with another human being. They all seemed to be deeply in love with their specially trained truffle dogs, who accompanied them on their woodland searches, sniffing out the fragrant booty lurking beneath the surface.

One old hunter, Aurelio, fed his beloved hound, Birba, by biting a hunk of bread then letting her take it from his lips. When he’d half finished his broth he let the dog lap up the rest from his plate. After a dirty day’s hunting, curly-headed Sergio, a wind- and wine-weathered cherub, took his dog into the bath with him, washed its fur, then lovingly blow-dried it (still in the bath – not advisable, readers.)

One hunter no longer had a dog, because he’d given up hunting. Angelo, long-haired, wild-bearded, with fingernails like eagle talons, looked more like a witch from a fairy tale than an angel. Yet his decision to stop hunting was driven entirely by idealism and morality. He was furious that this age-old occupation of the mountain people had been commodified by modern capitalism. ‘There are too many greedy people,’ he fumed. ‘They don’t do it for fun or to play with their dogs, or to spend some time in nature. They only want money.’ And it was shocking to see how the value of the truffles – won through many hours of hard labour, which followed many years of struggle, frequent failure and occasional success – would increase in value from a few hundred euros per kilo to many thousands once the dealers got their hands on them.

Raw materials always gather value as they pass along the chain from producer to dealer to final consumer, especially if they’re limited in supply and sought after by a wealthy cognoscenti. Rarely is that so starkly evidenced as in the journey of a truffle from the muddy muzzle of a mountain hound,  through the hands of a dealer clandestinely examining his source’s latest find by the light of a headlamp in a midnight alleyway, to a corpulent, complacent, suited and booted man in a dining room, tucking in to a plate of fried eggs, fondue, and a hundred euros worth of truffles shaved over the top. The wealthy gourmets ended up looking both ridiculous and repulsive, the truffle hunters noble and idealistic. But both groups of men (it was all men) had clearly been driven a little crazy by their very different obsessions with this wrinkly fungus.

In Orkney we’re unlikely to be at risk of developing such dangerous obsessions. The prized white truffles of the Piemonte mountains are rarely if ever seen here. What we can enjoy are the more common and only slightly less fragrant black truffles, which are found in many parts of southern Europe, from Spain to Croatia. We usually stock olive oil infused with them (ideal for exotic pasta dishes), sometimes mushroom and truffle sauces, and always a choice of truffle cheeses: Italian Pecorino, French Brie, and even Welsh Cheddar.

Aye, captain, there’s buried treasure in that there cheese fridge…

You can read all about the West Side Cinema here. Their next two films look fantastic, and January is a special treat with a film every week instead of fortnightly.

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 20th November 2025. A new diary appears weekly. I post them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations, and occasional small corrections or additions.