Flavours and Territories: Bianco di Langa with summer truffle

The story we are about to tell you in this new appointment with "Flavours and Territories" is about one of the foods most appreciated by lovers of good food, the gold of the Langa: the Truffle, which Beppino Occelli has always used in combination with his most prestigious cheeses.

In fact, the genius of Beppino Occelli combined with his indissoluble bond with the Langhe territory and his passion for local dairy traditions. Bianco di Langa al Tartufo d'estate is born: a vegetable rennet cheese with 100% Italian milk.

Awarded by the Italians for its Quality with the Quality Award 2021.

Some interesting things about truffles:

What is a truffle?

A truffle is the fruiting body of an underground mushroom. Most truffles belong to the genus Tuber. Truffles are mycorrhizal fungus and therefore grow close to the roots of trees. Truffle spores are spread by mycophagous animals that feed on mushrooms.

Origin of the name

Recently, historian Giordano Berti, founder of the “Archivio Storico del Tartufo”( Historical Truffle Archive), has convincingly demonstrated that the term truffle derives from terra tufide tubera or also from terra tufule tubera. This title appears at the top of an illustration of truffle collection in the Tacuinum sanitatis, an illuminated manuscript with naturalistic content dating from the 14th century, known in several editions. According to Berti, the term truffle therefore derives from the similarity between this hypogeous fungus and tuff, a porous stone typical of central Italy.The term then contracted into terra tufide and into the dialects tartùfola, trìfula, tréffla, trìfola. The term truffle began to spread in Italy in the 17th century, but by then the vernacular term had already migrated across Europe, taking on various names: truffles in France, Trüffel in Germany, truffle in England.

Historical Notes

The first information on truffles appears in Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia. In the first century A.D., the Greek philosopher Plutarch of Chaeronea came up with the idea that the precious fungus was created by the combined action of water, heat and lightning. Several poets drew inspiration from this; one of them, Juvenal, explained that the origin of the precious mushroom, called 'tuber terrae' at that time, was due to a thunderbolt thrown by Jupiter near an oak tree (a tree considered sacred to the father of the gods).

Here, then, are some curiosities linked to the precious treasure of the Langa, the main ingredient of Bianco di Langa al Tartufo, a vegetable rennet cheese made exclusively from Italian goat's and cow's milk, with which Beppino Occelli wishes to tell the story of the charm of the Langa woods and hills, as well as the goodness that its lands can offer.