What is a truffle?
The French black truffle is a very irregular shaped fungus form. Truffles have a black wart-like exterior, but once cut, the surface is smooth with white veins running across the black surface. The colour inside a truffle indicates its quality, this cannot be seen without cutting the truffle, so you may find some truffles with a slight nick taken out of them. This has been done by our head grader to ascertain the condition of the truffle – its texture, colour and most importantly aroma.
Some truffles are as small as a pea and obviously not harvested, but some can reach up to 1kg.
The most popular size required by chefs in the top restaurants are in the medium range of 100-200 grams.
Smaller ones are generally used for processing and generally cheaper in price.
Truffière Management
Marcus Jessup, the manager of our truffière is committed to maintaining his reputation for being a consistent supplier of a top quality product throughout our season. This can be as early as June through to as late as early September.
Since 2009, we have been supplying chefs through distributors but during this time we have developed such a reputation that many of them have made the effort to contact us directly so we have decided to become more prominent in our own marketing endeavours.
All our efforts are in producing quality truffles. We are a small privately owned company; we are not in the business of selling trees or an investment scheme or company.
However, we have become very prominent in our “Tamar Valley Truffle Product Range” which is available online, or through any upmarket gourmet store in all states (except Western Australia).
Our Location
Tamar Valley Truffles is exquisitely located on Lake Trevallyn in the Tamar Valley, just 15 minutes from Launceston CBD in Northern Tasmania. Sited on approximately 8 hectares with some 3,000 oak trees planted in 2001, we have grown in prominence throughout Australia and worldwide.
The Tamar Valley has an excellent reputation in the food and wine industry producing top of the range wines which are exported throughout the world. Tasmania is known for its clean, green image and provides the perfect climate for producing quality products.
Our Trees
These were alternately planted:
- Quercus Robur (regular common deciduous English oak)
- Quercus Ilex (a prickly leaf much like a small holly leaf & evergreen)
In our early days it was interesting to know which trees produced better than others, by logging production to each tree. As the truffière has matured (and the owners with it) we find there is no longer much need for this data to be collected.
It is one of the most productive truffières in Australia and certainly growing a high quality product.
