Funghi business in Piedmont

In a wood in Piedmont just before twilight, Diana is hunting the costly white truffle. She is a crossbreed, half-pointer, half-Italian hunting dog, and her exceptional nose seems to carry her through the forest, snuffling lightly over roots and leaves. We greedy trufflers follow, crashing through the woodland after her, until suddenly, without hesitation, Diana throws her paws into the soil, digging, biting at roots and scrabbling until her master, Giorgio Romagnolo, a fifth-generation truffle-hunter (or

'A che bella! [It's a good one!]'beams Giorgio, plucking the truffle out of the soil. It is approaching dusk and the truffle appears to glow white in the darkening wood. While Giorgio makes a fuss of Diana, cooing to her and slipping her treats, I hold the tuber to my nose.

Is there a more intoxicating smell in nature? It makes your pupils dilate and your heart swell. It is soulful and hormonal at once; a small, grey, soil-clumped bulb that smells like love. The locals describe it as the heartbeat of a plant as it falls asleep. Let's just say the smell is a knockout. Diana wags her tail in proud agreement.

The elusive white truffle cannot be farmed and grows spontaneously in the roots of poplars, oaks, willows and linden in northern Italy, only between October and December. It is impossible to preserve, except in paste form (most truffle oils are synthetic), and the real thing expires after about a week, or three at best if kept under light soil in a jar. The large white truffle that a consortium, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Mick Jagger and Roman Abramovich, bought for £28,000 legendarily shrivelled in a locked fridge before its owners managed to eat it. White truffles are, in short, a goldmine under the oak trees of Piedmont, either FedExed to restaurants around the world in polystyrene boxes, or held in situ for international gourmands taking truffling holidays near Alba.

The Relais San Maurizio, a 31-room hotel situated two hours from Milan and 15 minutes from Alba, is the perfect base for such decadent pilgrimages. It is a former monastery perched on a hilltop where the air is clean and silent. Open fires crackle in baronial fireplaces and the architecture, once austere, has been prettified with pink murals and trompe-l'oeil friezes. The gorgeous gardens, myrtle-scented and tranquil, are perfect for contemplative (digestive) strolls and the views give over the hillside vineyards of the Langhe, hazes of purple or yellow according to their grape (nebbiolo, barbera or moscato bianco). Truly, the monks must have lived well here.

The church forbade the laity to eat truffles. 'They said, "Bring them to us, we will destroy them," 'Natale Romagnolo tells me. 'And they did – at their tables!'Natale, brother of Giorgio, is an adjudi-cator at the Annual Truffle Fair in Alba. Weather this summer was favourable to truffles and prices are currently 'just'200 per 100g, when in previous years they have reached 400 for the same weight. A little truffle goes a long way – one white truffle gives itself to an entire restaurant.

In Da Guido, the Relais San Maurizio's Michelin-starred restaurant, run by Andrea Alciati and his mother Lidia, the atmosphere was heightened and vivid, as if pheromone gas had been released, or Bill Clinton had just walked in. Ugly white, brain-like truffles were carried back and forth to be shaved over diners'pasta, wafting magnificently as they went. The restaurant is in the monks'former cellar, windowless and cave-like, so the smell was intense. My fiancé Alex and I feasted on fried egg in truffled cream (which was knee-weakeningly good) while at the adjacent table an Italian couple, the man built like Berlusconi, his wife emanating chic patience, took their time over the '400 volta'four-course truffle-tasting menu (£135 per head). We probably enjoyed their meal as much as they did. With white truffles, as with cigars, aroma is everything; consuming it is only a way of making the smell more intense. The flavour of
the white truffle is so absorbing it is best shaved over a blank canvas of steaming pasta or poached eggs.

Italian black truffles – warty in summer, musky in winter – are quite different. They are juicy when cooked, tasting like unusually profound mushrooms: funghi with a tiny depth-charge of something Stygian. But comparing them to white truffles is like comparing a Casio keyboard to a church organ. Yes, after a delicious visit to Piedmont, I am, like the former fathers of the monastery, a total truffle snob.