What Happens Before a Truffle Reaches Your Kitchen — A Note from Our Truffière

I am writing this in late May, sitting at Smithbrook as the nights begin to cool.

This is the time of year I find hardest to describe. There is excitement — real excitement — but also a particular kind of nervousness that only comes when something you have worked on for months is almost ready. The dogs are restless. The soil is doing what it needs to do. And somewhere below the roots of our oak and hazelnut trees, the truffles we have been waiting for are beginning to ripen. We wait until they are genuinely ready before we start the season.

We open for the season on 1 June.

I have been thinking about what that means for the chefs and distributors we work with — and for those we haven't yet had the chance to supply. Because what happens between the ground and your kitchen is something I rarely get to explain in full. I'd like to try.

We touch each truffle four times. No more.

The first time is when it leaves the ground — found by our dogs, lifted carefully, the soil still warm around it. The second is at our Truffle HQ in Subiaco, where every truffle is assessed individually. The third is when it is cleaned and graded. The fourth is when it is packed for you.

Four touchpoints. We do this to ensure the truffles you receive are of the quality we expect — and to protect the integrity of what we grow.

At each stage, the chain of control is unbroken. Every truffle that leaves us is fully traceable — from the specific block of our truffière where it was found, through grading, through packing, to the airway bill that carries it to your city. We can account for every step. That is not marketing language. It is how we actually operate.

We also reject approximately one third of what we harvest.

This is the part that surprises people. Not every truffle that comes out of the ground goes to a chef. If the aroma is not there — if the maturity is not quite right, if the texture or colour does not meet our standard — it does not leave Truffle HQ. We grade to UNECE standards, which means what you receive is what it claims to be.

We are proud to be the only truffle producer in Australia to hold ISO 22000 food safety certification. That certification exists because food safety, provenance, and traceability are not things we treat as administrative obligations. Every aspect of how we operate has been considered carefully. That is simply how we do things.

From the ground to your city in 24 hours.

A truffle found on Monday at Smithbrook is assessed, graded, and packed within 24 hours of harvest. By Tuesday afternoon it is on a plane — to Singapore, Hong Kong, across Asia, to the United States, the United Kingdom, and beyond.

We do not hold stock. We do not source from multiple farms. Every truffle comes from our single truffière here at Smithbrook — 17,000 trees, one property, one standard. What that means for you is consistency, full traceability, and the certainty of knowing exactly how your truffle was farmed.

We grow without pesticides or synthetic chemicals.

The soil at Smithbrook is managed regeneratively. We want to leave it in better condition than we found it. That is our ethos — and it shapes every decision we make, above and below the ground.

This is our tenth season. The trees are maturing. Production is increasing. And we are looking for the kind of long-term partners — distributors, importers, chefs — who want a direct relationship with the farm and care about knowing exactly how their truffle is produced.

If that is you, I would be glad to hear from you.

Evdokia