Winter truffles in July. Sounds impossible until you learn where they came from.

Winter truffles in July. Sounds impossible until you learn where they came from.

William pulled out a spread at MycoFest and passed them around so we could actually smell the difference. Périgord black winter truffle on one side, summer truffle on the other. All European species, some of them grown in Chile, which sits in the opposite hemisphere and harvests its winter crop right through our summer.

Fresh melanosporum in August is a supply chain flex most people never think about.

What struck me is how much truffles behave like wine. Nobody is chasing a single correct flavor. Tastemakers are hunting profiles, depth in one, a specific note in another, complexity in the best of them. Same species, same season, wildly different noses depending on maturity, soil and how it got handled after harvest.

Getting to smell them side by side taught me more in five minutes than a year of reading about them.

If you could only chase one, are you a depth person or a complexity person? Tell me in the comments.

#truffle #mycology #trufflehunting #tubermelanosporum #mycofest2026