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Meet Emy.  In this photo, Emy is hard at work, digging for truffles at La Rabassiere, the family owned truffle farm of Serge and Corinne Aurel in Grignan.  To be clear: we are talking about truffles of the highly prized fungus type – not the chocolate ones that derived their name from it.

Without Emy and her four colleagues, the family owned farm in the Drome department of the Rhone-Alpes region of Southern France would likely perish.  Fortunately, the lovable Emy adores digging for the costly “diamond of the kitchen” as she happily showed us during our visit to Serge and Corrine’s farm.

Our foray into the world of truffles on this excursion (during our France river cruise on the S.S. Catherine, one of Uniworld Boutique River Cruise’s newest river cruise ships to ply the Rhone and Saone rivers through Burgundy and Provence) started with a warm welcome by Serge.  He gladly accepted translation help offered by our guide, Janet, and enthusiastically introduced us to the world of truffles. With generous arm gestures he explained the difference between the summer and winter truffle, both in sensory experience and cost, how his farm operates and how truffle thieves are a problem.  No surprise if you know that a kilo of summer truffles is valued at EUR 100 or more – and the more fragrant winter truffles many times that amount!

Contrary to popular belief, pigs and ducks are no longer the preferred “truffle finders”.  Have you ever tried to get a pig in a car to travel to a distant truffle field?  Instead, friendly and – mostly – obedient dogs like our friend Emy are now trained from birth to like and look for truffles.  I won’t tell you how they do it – that is better coming straight from Serge – but let’s just say it involves milk, cookies and truffles.  Emy is a Lagotta Romagnolo, a loving and loyal Italian dog breed with a highly developed nose – ideal for truffle searching.

Serge and Emy are happy to demonstrate: Serge walks us to a field covered with trees. Full disclosure: in preparation of our visit, he buried several truffles on that field.  It takes Emy about 10 seconds to find the first one. Enthusiastically she digs and digs.  Dust and sand fly everywhere – but in seconds she picks up the baseball sized truffle, brings it to Serge and, at his command, drops it on the floor in front of him.  But not after taking a tiny little bite of the truffle first! This process repeats itself a few times – resulting in a sigh from Serge that Emy may need some recurrent training, as each bite costs him about 10 Euros!

Of course, every culinary excursion includes a moment to sample the goods: Corinne has prepared brioche slices spread with truffle oil and olive tapenade.  And this wouldn’t be France if we wouldn’t be offered a glass of wine too!