Australia: Manjimup truffles @ the wine and truffle co

We were both so excited to get into Manjimup and get some truffle action. They even had tours that you could join in on with the sniffer dogs and what not. It was well geared for tourism, and as soon as we walked in the truffle smell was everywhere. They produce black French truffles, called Black diamonds, and you can understand why at $2,500 per kilo. They expect to harvest over a 3 month season 2.9 tonne (but at a $5 mil start up cost, its no small biscuit) They had many other things to sample which all included truffle to some extent, which we got to taste; truffle mustard, oil and dukkah, honey hazelnuts and tapenade.

We were eager to do a bit of learning and met Stuart who talked us through the process and went out the back to get a fresh unpackaged truffle so we could have a sniff and a feel. Did you know, yes its fact time, that a fresh harvested truffle has a 2 week expiry date, and they take a week to mature after picking. So you pretty much have to eat them within that week. He recommended that as we are waiting for it to ripen in the fridge to put the truffle in a container with some cheese and/or eggs as the truffle will put out a wonderful aroma when it ripens and it will infuse with them. We were edging for an 11g truffle and at $2.50 per gram that was about our budget but our new mate gave us a great discount so we could "have a great truffle experience". We ended up walking out with a 25g extra class truffle at a 15g price.