The Truffle Guide

There's a Truffle for every season

Once a year, each individual fresh truffle reaches its peak aroma and taste. That’s when it pairs perfectly with the best seasonal ingredients. Delicate, heady, earthy, rich: each variety brings a spectrum of intense and subtle flavours. Here at TruffleHunter we seek out white and black truffles from around the world, and bring you delicious fresh truffles you can enjoy right now.

Black Winter Truffles

Tuber Melanosporum

Season Dec - April

Black Winter Truffles have a complex and intense aroma. As the season progresses, from December to April, they mature and these beautifully marbled truffles turn from mid-brown to a rich chocolatey colour. Becoming much rarer in their natural habitat, they are now also grown on plantations in Eastern Spain.

Heat them gently in a little olive oil or butter, and they take on a delicious peppery flavour. Sensational with the creaminess of a winter risotto! Fresh black truffle shavings can also garnish a rich-flavoured roast, like guinea fowl with potato and pancetta.

Black Summer Truffles

Tuber aestivum

Season May - Sept

Italian cuisine loves these tantalising truffles in country cooking and classic restaurant dishes, but Black Summer Truffles are less well known elsewhere. We think they’re hugely underrated. They are delightfully mild in May, with gentle notes of hazelnut, but then develop with the season, deepening to an intense, earthy aroma by midsummer. Try them the Italian way: in a risotto of king prawns with garlic, or in tiny shavings over a seared steak tagliata.

Luxurious weekend lunch? Try a roast chicken salad or griddled artichokes with Black Truffle Mayonnaise, and open the chilled Viognier..

Black Autumn Truffles

Tuber uncinatum

Season Oct - Dec

Bring out those satisfying, late-season flavours. Black Autumn Truffles combine deliciously with wild mushroom pasta, or with lighter-flavoured roast game or chicken and a glass of silky Pinot Noir. If you love hearty and authentic regional dishes, this is a taste to explore. A rich palate is combined with an earthy, nutty aroma – here’s where you really taste the woodland character of the truffle. Also worth knowing: Black Autumn Truffles stay fresh for longer, and will keep for up to two weeks when stored correctly.

Can’t wait for autumn?

If you love that heady, earthy taste, swirl a little English Truffle Oil on a homemade pizza.

White Winter Truffles

Tuber magnatum

Season Oct - Dec

The Tuber magnatum is the world’s most highly prized truffle, available only for a month or two every year and always highly in demand from our restaurant clients. It’s a gourmet’s delight: exceptional complexity and depth of flavour, an intense aroma, and a colour that ranges from cream to a rich ochre. To find the best fresh truffles, we’ve travelled to northern Croatia: this treasure is found in a wooded valley, deep in the Motovun Forest in Istria.

White truffle is best as a finishing touch, to showcase its flavour and its intricate marbled texture.

Can’t wait for winter?

Immerse yourself in the flavour of White Winter Truffles with some White Truffle Oil drizzled over your favourite pasta.

White Spring Truffles

Tuber borchii

Season Jan - March

With hints of the Tuber magnatum, but much more affordable, White Spring Truffles combine classic truffle flavours with a natural scent of fresh garlic. They’re at their best from mid-January to the end of April. This is a local truffle hunter’s favourite, especially in the wooded Sibillini Mountains of Central Italy, local hunters. It’s where we sourced our first truffles – and we’re still going back.

Experiment with the mouth-watering combination of garlic and truffle: give an extra richness to chicken tartlets, shave truffles into scrambled eggs for a gourmet brunch, or team them with seasonal foods like morels and lamb.

Can’t wait for spring?

Use TruffleHunter White Truffle Balsamic Vinegar to create our easy but magical prosciutto salad for a summer lunch.