B3
THE ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, MAY 27, 2021
Dog, owner hunt for Northwest truffl es
By COURTNEY FLATT
Northwest News Network
The forest smells slightly
damp. Grasses cover logs.
Sticks decay on the ground.
Unknown animals have
surely left scents as they
traipse about, eating meals
and wandering around this
recently thinned stand about
an hour north of Seattle.
But all those smells —
undetectable to the human
sniff er, or at least this aller-
gy-suff ering reporter —
don’t matter to “Lolo,” a
lagotto romagnolo. The Ital-
ian dog is hot on the hunt for
black truffl es.
“They’re often called
Oregon black truffl es, but we
have quite a lot of them in
Washington. They just beat
us to the naming,” said Alana
McGee.
Besides truffl es, just about
the only other scent the dog
cares about is the bag of
steak and chicken that Lolo’s
owner, McGee, carries in her
pocket. The tasty morsels are
dolled out as a reward each
time Lolo sniff s out the fruity
truffl es, sometimes buried a
foot underground.
It’s Lolo’s ninth birthday
— hence, the steak.
“Last week my husband
accidentally
overcooked
some tri-tip, so I cut some
of it up for the dogs. They
were pumped,” McGee said.
“They actually work bet-
ter for higher value treats.
I’ve realized that they pre-
fer steak, but I can’t do that
every day.”
To get that steak, Lolo
runs from truffl e to truffl e. To
the untrained eye, it appears
she’s picking spots of grass
or dirt beneath branches
at random. But it’s taken
years of training for Lolo to
become so profi cient at hunt-
ing down the fruity, fl oral
smelling fungi — she even
fi nds one the size of a pea,
several inches underground.
“At this location the other
week, she found one that was
over a foot and a half down,”
McGee said.
Lolo taps her nose to the
dirt and backs up. Often she’ll
start to furiously scratch at
the ground as McGee runs to
catch up.
“Oh, right there? Hold on.
Wait, please, wait. Where?
Can you show us?” McGee
calls to Lolo as she starts to
dig.
McGee ferrets through
the dirt until she fi nds Lolo’s
treasure. She plunks the
mud-covered fungus into a
woven basket and repacks
the dirt and grass. If she’s
not fast enough, Lolo grows
impatient, whining for her
steak, sometimes trotting off
in search of her next hidden
gem.
Or, as McGee sits next
to Lolo, a moment too late:
“The problem with Lolo is
if we don’t stay with her, she
does that, which is eat them.”
Lagotto romagnolo dogs
have been used for truffl e
harvesting for hundreds of
years in northern Italy. But,
with a focus on training fun-
damentals, McGee said any
dog can learn to sniff out the
fungi, from chihuahuas to
huskies to great danes. As a
part of her business, Truffl e
Dog Co., she’s trained them
all (and their humans) to
search for truffl es.
Photos by Courtney Flatt/Northwest News Network
TOP: Sometimes Alana McGee, owner of Truffl e Dog Co., has to
help her dog, ‘Lolo,’ fi nd truffl es buried under sticks and logs.
McGee always repacks the dirt after they fi nd a truffl e. ABOVE:
Truffl es found in the Northwest. LEFT: Jamie Hunt, left, and Holly
Robinson opened Fast Penny Spirits during the coronavirus
pandemic. They use locally sourced ingredients, including
Northwest truffl es, in both styles of amaro liqueur they sell.
Molina, a retired botanist, in
a newsletter after his 2009
report was newly published.
For culinary truffl es, peo-
ple may be most familiar
with Italian white truffl es
or French or Perigord black
truffl es, delicacies that can
fetch exorbitant prices per
pound.
Three types of truffl es
are used for cooking in the
Northwest: white, black and,
less often, brown.
harvested with methods other
than animals, McGee said.
“About 80% of the native
truffl es you’re going to fi nd
in the Northwest market
are still not found by dogs,”
McGee said, just as Lolo
fi nds another truffl e. “Oh,
there it is. Good girl. Thank
you. They are harvested via
rake.”
McGee said dogs disturb
a much smaller amount of the
forest fl oor.
Sustainable harvesting
Sustainability is a big part
of McGee’s harvesting. She
initially discovered truffl es in
Italy. Then she moved home
to the Northwest and found
out truffl es grew here, too.
While
prime
truffl e
hotspots are often tightly
kept secrets, the most prolifi c
sites are found in Oregon’s
Willamette Valley, also home
to the annual Oregon Truffl e
Festival, based in Eugene.
‘WORKING ON A TRUFFLE ORCHARD,
WHERE THEY GROW THOSE EUROPEAN
SPECIES, IS MUCH MORE AKIN TO BOMB
DETECTION OR NARCOTICS DETECTION.
IT CAN BE VERY TEDIOUS FOR THE DOGS,
REALLY STRENUOUS. THIS IS SUPER FUN
FOR THE DOGS. SO WILD HUNTING THEY
ABSOLUTELY LOVE. THEY GET TO RUN AROUND
AND PLAY IN THE FOREST AND TREASURE HUNT.’
Alana McGee | owner of Truffl e Dog Co.
A Northwest delicacy
In the Northwest, truffl es
don’t only smell good to peo-
ple and dogs, many animals
also scarf on the delicacies.
Wildlife like deer, bear and
squirrels then spread the truf-
fl e spores around Douglas fi r
forests, after they’re fi nished
digesting.
The U.S. Forest Service’s
Pacifi c Northwest Research
Station documented more
than 350 truffl e species in
the Northwest, including in
Northern California and parts
of Idaho and British Colum-
bia, Canada. The research-
ers say this region grows
more types of truffl es than
any other place on the planet,
except Australia. Some spe-
cies are considered sensitive.
People don’t eat many of the
truffl es that grow here.
“The Pacifi c Northwest
has been a hotbed of evolu-
tion for the development of
truffl e fungi,” wrote Randy
The 2009 report says that
the most common method
of harvesting truffl es in the
region has contributed to
a “lackluster” reputation
for Pacifi c Northwest truf-
fl es. Often, rakes rip up the
topsoil to expose the truf-
fl es underneath. Many of
the raked fungi are not har-
vested at peak ripeness, like
their European counterparts,
where dogs harvest the pre-
mium products.
“The sooner PNW truf-
fl e harvesters train and use
dogs to harvest only ripe truf-
fl es, the sooner prices for pre-
mium Oregon truffl es will
approach their full potential,
but overcoming a reputa-
tion for poor quality will take
time,” the report states.
In fact, the U.S. is one
of the few countries in the
world where truffl es can be
“(Raking) is really bad for
the salmon streams, terrible
for the forests. You go into
an area that’s been raked, and
it’s really just kind of dev-
astating to look at,” McGee
said.
Truffl es can also be
farmed — and can be raked
there as well. McGee said
Lolo is one of the few dogs in
the U.S. that can hunt for truf-
fl es in the wild and on farms.
“Working on a truffl e
orchard, where they grow
those European species, is
much more akin to bomb
detection or narcotics detec-
tion. It can be very tedious
for the dogs, really strenuous.
This is super fun for the dogs.
So wild hunting they abso-
lutely love. They get to run
around and play in the forest
and treasure hunt,” McGee
said.
There was a small truffl e
harvesting industry in Ore-
gon when McGee got into
it, around 13 years ago. But
not many people were har-
vesting truffl es in Washing-
ton, especially not many
people hunting down truf-
fl es with dogs.
McGee started train-
ing students — human
and dog — once she had
some truffl e experience
under her belt. That was
about 10 years ago. She
also sells truffl es to local
restaurants, harvesting them
day-of and only as many as
needed.
“We are only harvesting
a small percentage of the
truffl es that are actually in
the ground at any one time.
And we’re only getting the
ones that are ripe,” McGee
said.
That ripeness means they
need to be used quickly.
Liquid delicacy
A newer venture in Seat-
tle is infusing the herbal
liqueur amaro with truffl es.
Fast Penny Spirits sits on a
shipyard in the city’s Queen
Anne neighborhood. Friends
Jamie Hunt and Holly Rob-
inson opened up the distillery
during the pandemic, featur-
ing the Italian-style after-din-
ner drink.
A cozy outdoor tasting
area invites guests to sip on
diff erent styles of amaro. On
a recent afternoon, a cou-
ple orders two glasses to sip.
Hunt pours a bit of the Amer-
icano, a digestif-style drink.
“You’ll taste more of the
black truffl e, chocolate and
the spices and earthiness,”
Hunt said.
In the back of the distill-
ery, tinctures and botanicals
line the walls. A dehydrator
dries out truffl es for future
batches while another jar of
the black bulbs sits nearby.
The liqueurs are made out
of local ingredients — from
saff ron harvested in Chelan
County to regional Rainier
cherries — and a litany of
botanicals.
“We started fi guring out
the recipe by taking over
100 botanicals and tinctur-
ing them in alcohol,” Hunt
said. “We just did a bunch
of micro-trials for the rec-
ipe so that we could do doz-
ens a day and then fi gure out
what’s working and what’s
not.”
To help fi nd more of the
spendy fungi, Hunt is train-
ing her dog Fiori to sniff out
truffl es in Washington state’s
forests. At fi rst, they played
games where Hunt hid the
truffl es around her home.
Now, Fiori has advanced to
start searching the musty for-
est fl oor.
“You’re out here, and
you’re trying to commu-
nicate and watching their
behaviors,
and
they’re
watching you. Well, actually,
they’re not watching you that
much,” Hunt laughs.
“You’d be surprised. Dogs
are really in tune to people’s
body language,” McGee said.
Fast Penny Spirits is able
to use the truffl es that aren’t
pretty enough for restaurants,
but that are still tasty and
shouldn’t be wasted.
“To be able to work in sus-
tainability with our produc-
tion and look at new methods
of creating spirits in a sus-
tainable way, I think, is really
important,” Robinson said.
The market for North-
west truffl es is growing.
Prices have risen recently, as
more dogs begin to harvest
fresher fungi. On the low
end, McGee estimates North-
west truffl es could go for
$400 per pound. The Oregon
Truffl e Festival says the Ore-
gon fungi is now selling for
around $800 per pound.
Chefs — and distilleries
— are starting to lean into
the locally-grown delica-
cies. Forest-to-fork, McGee
said. And their uses are
innumerable.
She ticks off a list: Infused
butter and eggs, pesto, piz-
zas, pastas, seafood — oys-
ters are her favorite —
infused cheeses and nuts, and
vanilla ice cream — poten-
tially the fi rst truffl e-based
food she made.
“Our native black truf-
fl es lend themselves really
well to dessert-type items,”
McGee said.
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