Hunting Truffles And Other Discoveries In Champagne

Truffle hunting in Champagne? I had never heard of truffles from Champagne before, except the chocolate ones made to look like Champagne corks of course.

Truffles generally come from two areas in France, Provence, and the Perigord region, and I have never even thought I going truffle hunting before.

While on my recent grape picking adventure in Champagne, I spotted a brochure about a local upcoming truffle festival.

I was extremely intrigued, to say the least to discover that someone was harvesting truffles in the Champagne region and made plans to go.

We went on a Sunday so as not to miss Paris Nuit Blanche on Saturday night.  The day started out cloudy and cool as we drove towards the countryside east of Epernay, to the small village of Matougues.

The “festival” was somewhat a misnomer, as it was put on by the truffle producers to showcase their production and teach others about truffles.  It turned out, however, to be impressive, fun and very informative!

The small truffle museum and boutique was tucked inside the enclave of the Auberge des Moissons, a hotel restaurant there.

We were greeted by Honey, the chocolate labrador truffle dog who gave us a quick perfunctory glance and sniff, then proceeded to return to napping by the entrance.

There was a movie that outlined the basics of truffle hunting, starring Honey, of course, and a wonderful lighted exhibit of all that you would ever want to know about truffles that you never knew before.

For some of us with a gastronomic bent, truffles even remain those out of reach culinary treasures that we see as very extravagant and frankly maybe even frivolous.

I must admit that I rarely use truffles in cooking basically because of the outrageous expense of buying them fresh.

I don’t trust the so-called truffle-infused oils one often sees, especially from Italy claiming to have truffle aroma, stemming more from a chemical lab, rather than any real truffle.

Canned ones are ok, but with me, its either get a fresh one or go without. They are astronomically expensive fresh, so you generally can only find them fresh around the Christmas holidays.

There are summer truffles too, but the best ones are harvested in the autumn months well into February.

These expensive knobbly black morsels grow a few inches underneath dead leaves and brush at the tips of tree roots.

For some strange reason, they have a symbiotic relationship to roots of certain oaks, hazelnut and even some species of pine.

Before the truffle hunt, I was delighted to partake in a cooking demonstration,  even more than usual having skipped lunch en route.

The chef was excellent and very generously passed out his creations for all to sample.

They were all simple to do as long as you had some fresh truffles on hand!

First was some barely scrambled eggs made even creamier with added cream and truffles.

The second was an appetizer of a whipped Chaource cheese, mascarpone and with whipped cream and chopped truffles.

Chaource is a cheese from the neighboring Aube region that has a very buttery and nutty taste due to the high-fat content, called a double cream.

The pure white crust was cut off, mixed till smooth and had the mascarpone and whipped cream folded in with the truffles.

The third dish was a sauteed turkey, deglazed with Ratafia with cream and truffles added at the end, quick and easy.

Ratafia is made by the way from the leftover pressed grape seeds and stems of Champagne grapes that is fermented and then distilled into an eau de vie.

It was time to follow Honey, the truffle dog, and her handler into the forest!  I resisted grabbing a flute of Champagne for sale for 6 euros, preferring to have mine later on as an aperitif.

The truffle forest was conveniently located across the highway from the Auberge/restaurant.

He explained that everyone in the village thought they were crazy to attempt to grow truffles, called trufficulture, back in 2001.

The truffle forest was planted with mostly hazelnut trees, that suited the cold long winters Champagne often had.

Truffle spores were seeded around each little tree, that he said was about as big as a geranium plant when first planted.

By 2008, they were able to harvest their first quality truffles!  Since then, from late September to December they harvest several hundred kilos!

Upon entering the forest, the sun had started to peak out of the grey clouds and ribboned the forest with golden strands of light.

Honey proceeded to promptly mark her territory with a pee near the entrance.  The forest floor was somewhat spongy from the previous day rains and scattered with orange and rust-colored leaves of autumn.

There were a lot of tangled spike looking balls of ripe wild hazelnuts sprinkled all over that made a crunchy sound when stepped on.

With some encouraging words from her handler, Honey darted off poking her brown nose here and there for a promising spot, then running off to find another.

You had to follow her quickly as she wavered back and forth between rows of trees until she would suddenly stop and used her nose to sweep away the crackling brown leaves covering the soil.

As soon as she started to paw the dirt energetically, her handler stooped to quickly and carefully scrape deeper till the truffle came into sight.

Often Honey was able to dig the truffle out by her paws alone and proudly held it in her jaws like a prized jewel.

Immediately after retrieval, she would sit awaiting her well-earned treats, before darting off again.

Honey doesn’t eat the truffles, except some very small ones, preferring instead to snack on the wild hazelnuts, crunching on them shell and all!

The ones I tasted shelled were quite good but said to be too small to be commercialized.

Honey’s owner said it took about two years to train her to sniff out truffles and that dogs were now preferred truffle hunters instead of pigs because pigs like to eat them!

Lightly brushing away some clinging dirt, he shaved off a small portion to see if the truffle was worth keeping.

He explained that not all truffles found were kept, as some were too immature to have developed any aroma and tossed back down.

Others not gathered showed visible signs of having been munched on by insects, who also appreciate the truffle as much as humans.

The interior color of these ruffles was cafe au lait colored streaked with white, whereas the truffles from Perigord are more black inside, called tuber melanosporum.

The ones harvested in Champagne were a cousin called tuber unicarum.

I couldn’t leave without purchasing one of Honey’s truffles, so I settled on a 15 gram one for 15 euros.

Before getting in the car, I enjoying spying on the restaurant’s rooster and egg-laying hens that supply them with all those eggs they use in preparing their famous truffle only menus.

They had several adorable little houses that would make any chicken proud to live in I suppose.

Dinner that night posed somewhat a problem as many in Reims and the surrounding area are closed on Sunday.

The pretty Chateau de Sacy was open and proved to be stunning looking perched high on a hill overlooking the lights of the tiny village below.

I was looking disappointed pouring over the wine carte that the only Bouzy they had was 60 euros and however much I was in a mood to drink this unusual red wine of Champagne, I settled on a perfumed and fleshy Saint Joseph from the Rhone.

I hate it when restaurants mark up wines by 300%, preferring to go buy a bottle, rather than pay their ridiculous prices, but in Champagne, wines are already marked up just because they come from Champagne!

The best dishes were a marinated skate in herbed gelée and a risotto of orge(barley) with ris d’agneau(lamb sweetbreads), though I thought the presentation could have been better,

The dessert was a lovely poached pear sitting on top of a sablé with rose cream and ice cream made of rose cookies from Reims.

The next day was full of glorious sunshine not to be wasted running around Reims again, however interesting the cathedral and city may be.

Living in Paris is already the ultimate city experience, so I crave nature and the countryside when away for the most part.

We parked by the multicolored vines that I could tell had been already harvested.

 

I happily found some leftover Pinot Meunier grapes that provided another gourmet treat to eat freshly picked overlooking the beautiful vineyards in the warm sunshine.

High on a hill, I did see some vines still heavily laden with clusters of blue-black Pinot Noir grapes and figured they were going to be late harvested as some Champagne houses may do in great years like this one.

You definitely do not want to stop near these as you might get angrily chased away if suspected of picking them!

We stopped by the small museum on the Mountain de Reims, where I picked up a great little book on Romanesque churches that had pull out on plates describing the many local village churches.

Knowing that they were probably all locked up on a Monday, we nevertheless enjoyed village hopping and circling around each one surrounded by graves of villagers as is the custom in most country churches.

The Champagne countryside is also dotted with several foreign military cemeteries, a sorrowful reminder of the unfathomable loss of young men lives.

As I passed by 4 Italian, British and German ones, with hundreds of crosses and tombstones, my eyes filled with tears thinking about these poor soldiers and identifying with all the grieving mothers, now long dead who never saw their sons come home from combat during WWI and WWII, heavily fought on blood stained soils of Northern France.

Before heading back to Paris, I saw a washed out sign for Abbaye Notre Dame d’ Igny, which I had never heard of before.

Not knowing if we were going on a goose chase or not, to find ruins or a real one, after about 20 minutes of winding narrow roads, without a village in sight, I saw a high walled off enclave.

I was surprised to find a real working abbaye with the front gate open.  The sign said it was a Cistercian one, which I had expected to be cloistered and closed to the outside world.

Gingerly walking through the vast rose filled courtyard to the church, I saw two nuns in traditional white habits with black aprons surveying the plants.

Inside there was a small exhibit of the order stemming from Saint Bernard de Clairvaux who started Cluny in Burgundy.

There has been an abbey there since 1127!  Their boutique was unfortunately closed, so I missed out on buying some of their chocolate made on the premises by the nuns.

They do offer retreats, as many abbeys do in France, which makes for a  refreshing spiritual haven in the stillness of nature for weary souls.

I did not take any photos as I usually do, perhaps unconsciously not wanting to invade the mysterious air and reverence I often find in these old grounds

Back home, the truffle was sliced and then chopped to macerate in butter for several days, as the volatile esters need fats to release the truffle aromas, though you can put them in with eggs like the photo above.

I made my fond de boeuf with some saved rib bones and after reducing it down made a Perigueux sauce with the chopped truffles that I served with a rib roast.

The rest will be frozen in the butter to adorn and flavour a holiday bird in the near future.

 

As you can see there are a lot more discoveries to be found in Champagne than vineyards and the delicious bubbly wines that come from here.

I will come back of course for all of the above and some new ones yet uncovered.

PS.  Just to leave you with a smile is the Cav O Truffles brochure in English, that should have been proofread by a native speaker before being printed!