Truffles v. Truffle Oil

What’s the big deal?

The truffle is prized by foodies around the globe—and for good reason. Its earthy, ineffable flavor makes other fungi look like poor imposters. Truffles, however, are costly, and this cost does make some gourmands search for the deliciously dirty truffle taste without the sky-high truffle price tag.

In an effort to save money, some foodies turn to truffle oil. However, does truffle oil stand up to real, raw, whole pieces of truffle? Some would argue yes; others would say there’s no comparison at all to the “real thing.” Some gastronomes, and even some chefs, would even argue that truffle oil is the most cost-effective way to enhance a dish with the flavor of the indigenous truffles—white ones are found in northern Italy and black truffles in Perigord, France—to their dishes. It’s also worth pointing out that it can be difficult to find whole truffles in the US, so cooks, connoisseurs, and everyone else who wants a taste of truffle sometimes have little choice but to purchase truffle oil. This oil can cost as much as $30 for just over three ounces, and you can also find concentrated truffle oil made with cold-pressed oil pressed with actual truffle for as much as $70 for .33 ounces.

Chef Kevin Sippel of IWM’s Studio del Gusto takes the stand against truffle oil on the premise that it’s mostly artificial. “Truffle peelings and preserved truffles are garbage,” he says of the liquified version usually made of mushrooms, black olives and truffle oil. Instead, Sippel, who also dismisses other “imitation” truffles like those grown in Croatia, China, Poland or anywhere other than Italy or France, prefers using black winter truffles. Sippel observes that white truffles are great, but they’re far more delicate than the black and are therefore limited to specific dishes. “I like the punch you in the mouth and versatility of the black truffle,” he says. “They hold up well to aggressive cooking. Good white truffles should smell like good white truffles, and if someone is selling you white truffles from Alba ask for the certificate of authenticity.”

The price tag is high for truffle oil and it’s even steeper for actual pieces of the fungi. The expense stems from the labor necessary to gathering the tasty delicacy during its yearly season of September to December. Grown underground among the roots of oak trees mostly in the Langhe region of Piemonte and Alba, white truffles (or trifola d’Alba, the white truffle of Alba) are first located by the keen noses of the trufulau, or truffle hunting dogs, and then they’re gathered by hand. It’s a labor-intensive process to procure this luxury item. For example, 1.6 pound piece of truffle sold for $150,000 at the White Truffle Festival in Piemonte last November.

Delicate white truffles have hints of garlic and can be eaten raw or thinly shaved over pasta, risotto, eggs, fondues or just about anything savory, while black truffles have a more pungent aroma that makes them more food specific. The French counterpart to our trifola d’Alba, black truffles are earthier and are often stored with eggs or added to sauces, bread and other foods to permeate their flavors with truffled goodness. Slightly less expensive than white truffles, black truffle is a better choice with heartier foods like meat or rich sauces.

Any Piemonte Barolo will pair well with a white truffle-infused dish, but when having such a posh treat, you might as well go with some of the best like Bartolo Mascarello, Luciano Sandrone, Aldo and Giacomo Conterno, or Bruno Giacosa. IWM’s Perry Porricelli has tried all of these Barolos with truffles but favors Aldo Conterno’s Barolo Granbussia. Only made in the best vintages, Perry says “Aldo seems to have a wine made for truffles.” But then any meal with Granbussia is bound to be good—truffle, truffle oil, or truffle free.

Oxidized? Or Aged to Perfection?

Exploring the fine line between aged and uh-oh…

No matter how little we know about wine, most of us know that there is a major difference between everyday drinking wines and wine that requires aging. But how does one know when a wine is just right? Being a wine professional, I was taught how to recognize a wine that has been aged versus corked, maderized, or oxidized; this knowledge has come in handy. However, it can be hard for clients who are beginners to learn all these concepts. Still, it’s a necessity.

The amount of age a wine needs in order to show its full complexity varies greatly from wine to wine. The actual process of aging wine is most noticeable in the process of tannins in the wine reacting with other components until they are unable to stay in solution, where upon they become visible sediment. As this happens, most of the aromas of the grape are replaced by the reductive aromas of the aged wine, which can include dried fruit notes, nuts, leather, oxidative flavors and more distinct minerality. At the same time, the color in the wine either lightens if it is a red wine (the red pigments, called anthocyanins, bond to the sediment), or turns browner in white wine as it oxidizes.

Certain wines have obvious aging requirements. Take Barolo, the king of Italian wine, for instance. To open a Barolo early is an utter shame. The amount of tannin and acidity present in this wine makes it almost undrinkable in its early years, and the Nebbiolo grape requires around 15-20+ years of age in bottle show its true potential. Another example of an ageable wine is a Prädikatswein designated Riesling. Some Rieslings can age up to 30 years, eventually reaching an golden amber color and showing notes of petrol, which are coveted by the experienced Riesling connoisseurs and completely off-putting to novices.

The Riesling divide suggests that age on a wine can be misunderstood. For example, this New York Magazine listing gives some common wine defects, but this helpful guide also explains that what is perceived as “bad” is not actually so, even for everyday drinking wines. Aged wines, on the other hand, can be even harder for a novice to understand.

I believe that being able to differentiate a young bottle from a mature, or being able to tell if a wine is capable of growing with age, comes with practice and time. Taste preferences also develop and adjust. I remember my first time trying Fino and Amontillado sherries. I thought they were some of the most bizarre liquids on the planet and would never have imagined myself to develop a love of them so impassioned that I can honestly say I am a sherry fanatic. I am also in love with our Castello di Cacchiano 2001 Vin Santo del Chianti Classico. These wines are vinified and developed in a much different process than dry reds and whites, yet they have some similar aromatics to well-aged wines. The nuttiness and deep dried fruit notes are enticing and seemingly classic.

In the end, I think it’s safe to say that everyone can use a little more wine practice and knowledge. We should all be well-informed of the wonderful taste experiences out there and be prepared to know what to expect when ordering more eclectic and vintage wines at favorite restaurants and your local wine shops. And we should understand that often our tastes—like wines themselves—can evolve with age.

A Context-Free Wine Epiphany

how love doesn’t always mean a thing

Context is key, or so many writers on Inside IWM would have a neophyte wine-drinker believe. Wines, people have claimed, taste better with people you love, at meals with meaning, while celebrating something you’ll want to remember. Certainly, I can’t argue with the bulk of human experience—IWM founder Sergio Esposito’s memoir, Passion on the Vine, brims with the beauty that comes from sharing wine with beloved people, beautiful meals, and gorgeous countryside. IWM has as its foundations the tenet that wine is love, and it has served the company, and its clients, well.

And yet.

One stifling August day almost two years ago, I had a wine epiphany. I was working at IWM, writing copy for wines I’d never tasted, descriptions of lands I’d never visited, and stories about food I’d never tasted. It was hot, tedious, often mind-numbingly painstaking work (I’m a thorough researcher, and I’d often have six or seven tabs open on my Firefox to ensure that even if I’d never had a Bracchetto myself, and even if I’d never visited Valle d’Aosta, I could make the writing real enough that someone who had would recognize their experience in my words). It was work. I enjoyed it, but it was work.

There was, one afternoon, a frisson of excitement that ran through the staff. It turned out that a client had returned a bottle of wine. It was a very rare occasion because IWM sources, stores and ships so carefully. In fact, this bottle was the only bottle I ever saw return to us after being shipped far away. Upon beginning to open the bottle, the client had noticed a partially dried cork, or so my memory of the scenario goes. I could be wrong, but the bottle was returned, and therefore we would have the serendipitous opportunity to drink it.

It was a Barolo from the Nixon administration. I don’t remember the producer, the vineyard, or the exact year, but I do remember that the bottle cost about my weekly take-home salary. With much ceremony and serious attention, the portfolio manager whose client had returned the wine opened the bottle. Using cheesecloth to filter the wine and a candle to light the bottle, he decanted it. A vibrant hush fell over the room as we waited, poised like meerkats at our desks. The moment came.

We all lined up. We each got a tender mouthful or two of wine in our Spiegelau glasses. The people around me swirled, they inhaled, they swirled, they inhaled, and they sipped. I followed clumsily. The wine, I noted, indeed did show dark red with the telltale orange highlights. The nose, I noted, did have violets and roses. I felt reassured that all my research on Barolo had not gone horribly wrong. I looked, I sniffed, and then I tasted.

The things that stick with me the longest, I’ve noticed, are the things that at first I didn’t really like. The poetry of Alexander Pope, the Talking Heads’ album More Songs about Buildings and Food, that one time I had really serious Beluga: all of these things that I now appreciate, even champion, at first made me inexpressibly churlish. This Barolo was the same.

It tasted of BBQ pork, of a field of flowers, and of dirt all at once. It was a confusing—if slightly oxidized—mess in my mouth, and the fact that I’d just eaten pineapple wasn’t doing it any favors. Around me people were smiling and gleaming bright with descriptions, and all I got was an unmistakable desire to eat ribs. I sniffed, I swirled, I drank, and I did my best. There was pork, there were flowers, and there was dirt, and I was done.

Except I wasn’t. Because of all the many millions of things I’ve put in my mouth, that Barolo is one of the few that sits in my memory still. It bothers me like Pope’s “Epistle to a Lady,” a work that I hated upon first reading but now love with an extra-flamey, white-hot burning passion. I suspect that when I die, I’ll have a few sensory memories rolling around my head, and that Nixonian Barolo will be one of them.

It had nothing to do with context. It had nothing to do with company (no slight to my coworkers). It had everything to do with one transcendent wine, a wine whose astounding character made me understand wine in a new way. It was an apotheosis of wine. It was my epiphany, and damn that slightly oxidized Barolo, but I want you again.

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