A Fungus Priced Like a Diamond

The bidding stalled at €80,000 and stayed there. On the block at Grinzane Cavour Castle sat a pair of white truffles that had grown together underground in Piedmont — a “twin,” 850 grams in total — presented by Mario Aprile, president of the Piedmont truffle hunters’ union, with his dog Jack at his side. Nine venues were linked in across four continents, counting the castle itself. Then Hong Kong moved, jumped straight to €100,000, and Caterina Balivo’s hammer came down.

That was the final lot of the 27th World Alba White Truffle Auction on Sunday, and it closed an afternoon that raised €545,800 for charity — the second-biggest total in the auction’s history, behind only the record year of 2022. Since 1999 the event has now raised €8,269,960. Run the math on the headline lot alone and it comes to €117.65 a gram. At Alba’s market this month the same fungus changes hands for a few euros a gram. Nobody pays €117 a gram for something to shave over pasta. The organiser calls the white truffle “the most precious diamond of the earth,” and the price only makes sense in those terms: this is a donation with a truffle attached.

The lots

Three truffles sold in the castle room before the finale. A 210-gram specimen went to Cherasco entrepreneur Mariano Costamagna for €8,000. A 250-gram truffle went to Shanghai’s starred chef Weng Yongjun for €10,000. The 300-gram lot produced the day’s best story: knocked down at €12,300, it was handed back by its buyer, FIPE president Lino Stoppani, who left his money with the charity and put the truffle on the block again. Second time around it made €14,000 from Varese entrepreneur Guido Borghi. One truffle, €26,300 raised.

The twin travelled with serious company: a double magnum of Barolo 2015 from Pio Cesare, a nine-litre Barolo DOCG “Paneròle” 2018 from Franco Conterno, a magnum of Asti DOCG Cuvage, a Moscato d’Asti 2025 from Saracco, and a 20-kilogram Albertengo panettone. The castle lots, counting the twice-sold 300 grams, came to €144,300. The rest of the €545,800 was built in the linked rooms’ own auctions — Hong Kong announced €130,000 raised in its room before the final lot even opened. Alongside the truffles, the fifteenth and last barrique of Barolo en Primeur sold to Hong Kong for €57,000. That is a separate project with its own ledger: the €57,000 takes Barolo en Primeur’s 2026 total to €1,197,500, and it is not part of the €545,800.

A fungus that refuses to be farmed

Tuber magnatum Pico grows underground, in symbiosis with the roots of oaks, hazels, lindens and poplars, and it has never submitted to cultivation. Every specimen on that castle table was found the slow way: a hunter — a trifulau — walking the woods before dawn with a trained dog, reading the animal’s pause at the base of a tree. The legal season runs from October 1 to January 31, and the product cannot wait. A white truffle’s perfume, the thing the whole price is buying, peaks and fades inside days.

Cut one open and the flesh is pale, veined with white marbling. Graders read that marbling the way jewelers read a stone. 2026 has not been a generous year: a hot, dry summer shrank the early crop, and the Enoteca’s president, Roberto Bodrito, told AFP the truffle “suffered from the drought,” with recent rains only now bringing the season back. Scarcity is part of this auction’s weather every year. This year it was the forecast.

Why Alba sets the price

Plenty of Italy grows white truffles. Alba grades them, prices them and throws the party. The hills around the town — Langhe, Roero and Monferrato — are a UNESCO World Heritage vineyard landscape, and the castle at Grinzane Cavour, home of the Enoteca Regionale Piemontese Cavour, sits above them. The 96th International Alba White Truffle Fair runs from October 10 to December 6, and its World Market in the Cortile della Maddalena is where the season’s honest price forms, stall by stall, every weekend.

The reference quote is the Borsino del Tartufo, published weekly by the Centro Nazionale Studi Tartufo. In the 2025 season it climbed from €400 to €500 per 100 grams in three weeks. This autumn’s early market quotes ran €350 to €550 per 100 grams, and by auction week Gazzetta d’Alba was reporting the market average climbing from €550, with the finest specimens past €900 per 100 grams. Hold those numbers against the final lot’s €11,765 per 100 grams and the shape of the thing is clear. The market sells a delicacy. The castle sells the right to be the person who paid for it — and gives the money away.

Nine countries, one castle

The format is part theatre, part telethon. Balivo worked the room with food writer Paolo Vizzari; actor and director Edoardo Leo stood as the edition’s godfather. The live links spanned 41,428 kilometres and nine countries. Hong Kong, Bangkok and Vienna are the veterans — Hong Kong bids from Umberto Bombana’s 8½ Otto e Mezzo, Bangkok from the Four Seasons on the Chao Phraya. Four rooms debuted this year. London joined from Macellaio in Soho, where the room ran a 50-seat lunch at £250 a head. Macau debuted at Don Alfonso 1890 in the Grand Lisboa Palace, at MOP 5,888 a person, with about a kilo of truffles across three specimens on its own block. Brasilia and Vilnius completed the new map, and the last link, as always, was not a bidder at all: the North Kinangop Catholic Hospital in Kenya, one of the places the money goes.

Where the money goes

The castle’s share supports Every Child Is My Child, the association founded by actress Anna Foglietta for children caught in wars; the Fondazione Piemontese per la Ricerca sul Cancro, the cancer research foundation at Candiolo; La Collina degli Elfi at Govone; and the Amici di Bruno Frea, who back the hospital at North Kinangop. Auction money there has already built a new operating theatre, and a transfusion centre is under way for a catchment of some 350,000 people. The linked rooms keep their own ledgers close to home: Mother’s Choice in Hong Kong, the Border Patrol Police School Foundation in Thailand, Teach for Austria in Vienna, the Macao Daily News readers’ charity fund and the Tung Sin Tong Charitable Society in Macau, the Esharelife Foundation in London, a programme for disadvantaged young talent in Vilnius, and the Instituto Dom Orione in Brasilia.

The twin itself set no record. The single-lot mark still belongs to 2022, when one truffle made €184,000 from a Hong Kong buyer, and last year’s triple truffle — 1,009 grams out of the Roero — made €110,000. This year’s lot was smaller than both. The room around it was bigger than almost any in the auction’s 27 years, and that is the number Alba will put on the poster: €545,800, raised in an afternoon, by a fungus that cannot be planted, only found.