Beneath The Forest Floor—The Art And Adventure Of Truffle Hunting In Istria

While traveling on the Istrian Peninsula, a pizza-shaped slice of land in the northern Adriatic, I follow a modern-day hunter-gatherer deep into northwestern Croatia’s Motovun Forest in search of nubby treasure, the fruiting body of mycorrhizal fungus.

No stranger to mud, and with bouncing dogs as our delightful stewards, we search for coveted white and black truffles, subterranean fungi that live in symbiosis with oak and hazelnut root systems in a region that rivals Italy and France due to its geological composition of rich limestone-studded moist soil.

Nature and Tradition: Truffle Hunting in Istria

For an adventurous arrival, I enlist the services of VBT/Country Walkers, expert curators of unique and well-planned guided tours. The new seven-day Istrian Peninsula Bike Tour Through Croatia & Slovenia includes a special visit to a family-owned farm where riders can take part in one of Croatia’s most celebrated traditions: truffle hunting.

After an energizing bike ride through the Mirna Valley, I reached Karlic Tartufi, a long-standing multi-generational business that leads pursuits on the same land where the Karlic family has been digging up truffles since 1966. The hunt is followed by a cooking demonstration and tasting of traditional specialties like cheeses and canapés, scrambled eggs, and pasta—everything with truffle oils, spices, honeys, pastes, and blends.

Meet the Affable Truffle Dogs

In the wee village of Paladini, a town of less than 50 residents and twice as many canines, I meet our guide and his trusty pair of truffle hunting dogs. “We have our youngest member, Stella; she can smell a truffle but she’s really lazy,” says Filip Kajin, a guide who has worked at Karlic Tartufi for eight years, since he was 12 years old. “We have Truffy, the first ever dalmatian dog used for truffle hunting. Nobody ever tried before since they are difficult to train.”

Filip, who wields an otka, a sharp metal digging spade with a long wooden handle, tells me that they work with 12 dogs, 11 of which are females. Males, he says, are “too romantic”. He continues to coach on the differences between white and black truffles. The white, he says, are much more expensive, harder to find, only grow in Italy and Croatia in the valley forests, and require a hard-to-get license.

You can tell a dog has found a truffle by the way he digs. “When we see they start digging with only a front paw, we know they found something,” he says. “If they dig with both, they are usually faking.”

Both dogs shoot off into the bottle-green woods, tenaciously sniffing and foraging. Then: success. A truffle is exposed. Stella, a Lagotto Romagnolo breed, scratches and stretches in the dirt while Filip pulls leaves off her coat, beams, and gets to work with the business at hand. “When I take a truffle out, I like to squish it really hard,” he says. “If it’s soft like a sponge, or juicy, it’s not good to eat. This one broke off, but it’s still really hard.”

Parting the truffle, Filip drops the pungent pieces in my hand. A deep inhale coats the inside of my nose like viscous oil and makes me recoil, yet seconds later, I return for more. It’s a mixture of wet earth, garlic, tree needles, yeasty warm bread, pumped gas, autumn leaves, used books, and I don’t know what, but it fills my senses with awe.

Learn About Training, Timing, and Pigs

Filip tells me that he begins training the dogs when they are only a couple months old. He starts by soaking bread in olive oil with truffles and then tosses it around so the pups can begin recognizing the scent. “I’ll do this almost every day for two or three months, and when I see that the only thing they think of is to run and eat what smells really good, I know they remember the smell,” he says. “Next, I take smaller fresh truffle pieces, put them in an enclosure with holes, and then hide it.” Soon, the young dogs are ready to go into the forest with older and more experienced dogs.

March—May is the best time for finding black truffles, although you can find them year-round, he says. For white, September through the end of the year. “In our family, out of eight of us who truffle hunt, only four of us got a license this year to hunt for white truffles,” Filip says.

When I asked Filip if the Karlic family has ever used pigs for truffle hunting, he says, “No, in Croatia and Italy it’s forbidden to use pigs because its considered animal abuse—you have to leave them starving for a few days so they can find something,” says Filip. “But the main reason is for our own safety—if I take a truffle out of Stella’s mouth, she’s not going to take my finger off or my whole hand.”

“Pigs were used in the beginning in France,” Filip says. “They saw first that truffles were found by wild boars, but even in France now, they use dogs.”

This is the illustrious story of how truffles began in Istria, first as “stinky potatoes” that nobody consumed or wanted, followed by a cultural hallmark that placed truffles at the heart, mirroring the Italians across the Adriatic sea.

Food and Family: Fill Your Belly with All-Things Truffle

Together with her brother, Ivan, Ivana Karlic runs the family business. “I love everything there is around truffles: hunting, cooking, training dogs,” Ivana says. “In a family business, everyone needs to know how to do everything, but it’s a joy because there’s always something new.”

Ivana tells me that her grandfather started the business—he was one of the first Croatians to commercialize truffle hunting. Her mother, Radmila Karlic, was next, earning her license when she was only eleven years old, making her one of the very first women in Croatia to become an official truffle hunter.

This wasn’t without it’s challenges, however. “Everyone would tell her that she’ll never have a boyfriend, she’ll never have a family, but she found my father,” Ivana says. “And little by little, they created a business, and people from all over the world came. My mother adores nature and adores people.”

Ivana continues to stir eggs, flipping them over in a large black pan, as she talks. “This is the most iconic Croatian dish,” she says. Ivana tells me about the annual truffle worshiping festival that kicks off in the rural town of Buzet, where everyone in Istria gathers to witness the world’s biggest truffle omelet being fried in a monster-sized pan in the town’s main square. “Everyone has chickens,” says Ivana. “This year, it was made with 2026 eggs—every year it goes in the Gunnies Book of World Records for the biggest and most expensive scrambled eggs.”

The vibrant-hued eggs are, of course, delicious as is the pasta that follows. I wonder if I’d like the truffle-heavy dishes as much if I hadn’t just rolled a fresh nugget in my hand in the forest, while I considered the history and culture that has solicitously swaddled it like pirate’s gold, connecting me to a new experience, a new land. Either way, the memory, now indelibly linked to all five of my senses, will be something I hold dear for a long time to come.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com