Truffle hunting with Jacqueline and Stefan

Getting to know the Truffle region

Stefan and Jacqueline met each other in 2010. Jacqueline already had her own award-winning travel agency in Driebergen-Zeist for several years. At one point Stefan indicated that he would love to go looking for truffles in Italy. Jacqueline already knew a 'Tratufaia' in Le Marche Italy from 3 years before who had shown her how to search for and find truffle. Short after that a long weekend of truffle hunting in Italy was organized.

Upon arrival, the couple immediately became acquainted with Giorgio and the dogs with which they set out early the next morning to look for truffle. Stefan couldn't believe his eyes and ears when truffle was actually found in a number of places in no time. He even accused good Giorgio of putting the truffle there! Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. The visit took place in February, which is an extremely good time to find the black winter truffle. Of course, a well-trained dog will find the black truffle!

Stefan still didn't find it credible, but he did have a new hobby: Truffle hunting in Italy. Because yes, looking for truffles in the Netherlands is still not possible, although growing truffles in the Netherlands is now possible in a number of places.

Here we are 10 years later: Stefan and Jacqueline have both become attached to Italy and in particular to looking for truffles, they have had their own house in Le Marche since 2019 with their own piece of truffle land and Giorgio is like family to them.

The dogs are their best friends and going out together in the early morning to look for these delicious truffles is just a party every time.

Looking for truffles in Italy with Jacqueline and Stefan – the ins and outs

A day of searching for Truffle

The alarm wakes you up at 04:30am, a cup of coffee at the local café with a sandwich and then we drive to our friend to pick up 2 dogs.

It is important to decide the evening before which dogs will go with us, because they will get less food than the other dogs.

Then we get in the car and drive to our area, the tension rises what will we find today?

As soon as we let the dogs go, they have to let go of their energy for a while. They run wild through the beautiful hills of ‘Le Marche’ to do their needs and then come running fast because their game is about to start!

The dogs often smell from afar that there are truffles in the area. That often means that we have to climb uphill and downhill very quickly to keep up with them, otherwise they will quickly eat them themselves and that is not the intention of course!

The moment we get to the dogs and they start smelling, the tail starts wagging and they start digging like crazy then we know THERE IS TRUFFLE. Then there is the question of what kind of truffle and how big or small it is, because that's what it's all about when looking for truffle.

This makes truffle hunting so great as a hobby, you don't know where they are and how big or how small they are, the tension rises.

If the dogs have pointed to the right spot, they will receive a dog biscuit as a reward. This way they stay away from the finding location and they don't eat our truffle!

Then our work begins. Calmly we first dig out the earth around the spot with our hands. If the soil is too hard, we use our special truffle shovel.

This tool has a special tip that allows you to loosen the soil around the site.

It may be that the truffles are still 3 meters away. That is certainly often the case with the white truffle. Looking for truffles means: be patient and dig and sometimes enlist some extra help from the dogs. In the end this can sometimes take 1.5 hours or more BUT in the end the reward is a beautiful white truffle… The dogs are happy and we are happy