December saw Forbes compile a list of the 11 most extravagant meals. Truffles featured three times, with a White Truffle Dinner at Les Amis (Singapore) coming fourth, at 800USD per person, not including wine! In fifth place was the 5,000USD burger by Fleur de Lys chef Hubert Keller (Las Vegas) featuring kobe beef, foie gras and truffles. Finally, in ninth place was the Chef’s Table at L’Espadon Paris with a menu that includes “cappuccino-style” mashed potatoes, which featured truffles and cocoa.

The 11th Global Alba Truffle Auction was recently held in the small town of Grinzane Cavour near Alba, Italy. Private-equity investor Joseph Bae, of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Hong Kong, set his sights on an exquisite Alba Truffle. This particular truffle weighed in at 750gms (1lb 10oz) and was eventually bought by Mr Bae for a princely sum of 1 million Hong Kong Dollars, or £90,000.

This month we’re excited to be presenting our research at the First European Conference on the “European” Truffle Tuber aestivum/uncinatum. Hosted at the Biodiversity Center of the University of Vienna, this is a small gathering of scientists that we hope will strengthen in numbers with each meeting.

Location, location, location. The timeless advice on buying property can also be linked to truffle cultivation. Here at Mycorrhizal Systems we believe seed provenance to be really quite important. Many of our new plantations are started with a proportion of the planting stock grown from locally sourced seed. An example of this is our plantings in Baltic countries. The majority of the plantations are still planted with seed that we have tried-and-tested and proven to be an excellent host, but the percentage produced with attention to provenance is important for a number of reasons.