A Western Australian truffle grower says it has unearthed the state’s first cultivated white truffle, opening a potential new product line for a region that already supplies the bulk of the Southern Hemisphere’s black truffle.
Manjimup-based Australian Truffle Traders harvested 1.5 kilograms of bianchetto white truffle (Tuber borchii) from its Southern Forests farm this week. The family business says it is the first white truffle it has produced, and that it believes it to be the first grown anywhere in WA.
The bianchetto, until now grown commercially only overseas and at a handful of sites on Australia’s eastern seaboard, forms on the roots of the Italian stone pine (Pinus pinea). The Booth family planted 500 stone pines across two sites in 2022 with no guarantee the species would fruit in WA conditions.
Australian Truffle Traders Owner, Gavin Booth, said the harvest proved the variety could be farmed on the same ground that built the region’s black truffle trade.
“We weren’t expecting this when we went out truffle hunting yesterday morning. We are thrilled to find a white truffle from trees we planted only a few years ago,” Booth said.
“I want to be clear that this is the bianchetto, the white truffle you can grow. It is not the Alba white that has never been able to be farmed. This means a true white truffle can grow here, in Manjimup, on the same country that made our black truffles famous.”
The distinction matters commercially. The prized Italian Alba white truffle (Tuber magnatum) has resisted every attempt at cultivation worldwide and commands premium prices on wild supply alone. The bianchetto is its farmable, lower-cost relative. Booth says it fetches a similar retail price to black truffle, up to $3,000 a kilogram.
Manjimup and the wider Southern Forests sub-region is the Southern Hemisphere’s epicentre for the black Perigord truffle (Tuber melanosporum), accounting for an estimated 80 per cent of all black truffle grown south of the equator. Australian Truffle Traders is one of the two largest growers and aggregators of black truffle in the hemisphere.
A cultivated white truffle would broaden the region’s offer to chefs, retailers and home cooks, with a flavour profile distinct from the black truffle’s earthy, umami character.
“It is all garlic and onion, pungent and savoury with the bianchetto,” Booth said. “Within hours of posting our find on social media, I had interest from chefs from Sydney to San Francisco. I expect there’ll be some demand for these white beauties.”
Booth said the planting began as an experiment in line with the business’s sustainable forest approach, and flagged the prospect of a dedicated white truffle hunt experience for visitors later in the season.
“Truffles are fickle to grow. You cannot rush them and you cannot force them, so to have some white ones finally appear feels like the land is letting us in on a secret,” he said.
