Word: périgords
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...village even has its own truffle museum located in a medieval castle, with cross-vaulted ceilings and 16th century fresco remnants. The Museo del Tartufo tells the fascinating tale of the native, intensely pungent magnatum pico, or white truffle, which, together with other prestigious truffles such as the black P?rigord, were historically reviled as a tool of witchcraft and sought after by the Romans as an aphrodisiac. Flat screens show mini-documentaries about dog-training methods that prime canines to sniff out the prestigious white truffle; some trainers introduce the fungus to puppies by rubbing it on the mother...
...China is the world's biggest exporter of fake goods, from pirated DVDs to knockoff Birkin bags. Now add truffles to the list. To the naked eye, the Chinese black truffle, or Tuber indicum, looks virtually indistinguishable from its much-vaunted cousin, Tuber melanosporum, or the P?rigord truffle, a gastronomic delicacy that perks up winter menus with its earthy pungency. One taste, though, clears up any confusion: the Chinese variety is insipid compared with the French one. Yet over the past few years, unscrupulous dealers in Europe and the U.S. have begun passing off the Chinese truffles as P?rigord...
...modicum of pride about the 40-50 tons of truffles that his team of 20,000 gatherers harvests for him each year. "They taste just as good as the French ones, with maybe a little less aroma," he contends?although he concedes that he's never actually tasted a P?rigord truffle...
...contaminate the French countryside and do ecological battle with their more fragile cousin. Already, the ancient truffle terroir is being hammered by pesticides and urbanization. Two centuries ago, French black truffles were so abundant that they were cheaper than tomatoes; yet since then, the average annual harvest in the P?rigord region and beyond has declined from some 1,800 tons to 50 tons. An influx of Chinese truffle spores could finish off an already threatened gastronomic tradition...
...business using geese imported from Hungary. Now, he's attempting to duplicate the soil and precipitation conditions of southern France in his Yunnan fields. Just like France's INRA, Wu has done his own truffle-DNA testing, and he is determined to reverse-engineer an Eastern facsimile of a P?rigord. If he can create the correct environmental conditions, Wu believes Yunnan's plentiful land and low fixed costs will make him even more of a threat to the French truffle tradition. "Labor is very cheap here," Wu says. "In France they use pigs and dogs to find truffles...
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