Truffle Search & Traditional Tasting

The full Langhe Truffle day starts exactly the way the standalone search does: ninety minutes in the woods with Massimiliano and his dog Kelly, learning to read the ground the way a trifulau does, watching for the pause before Kelly starts to dig. If you've got the time, this is the version built to stretch that morning into something longer. 

Once the search wraps up, you head to the family's home along the road that runs from Barbaresco towards Pertinace, where a terrace looking out over the hills has been set up for exactly this kind of lunch. It's not a restaurant, there's no menu to choose from and no other tables, just the Bertello family's own space, repurposed for the day.

What arrives at the table tells the story of the region as much as the truffle does. A mixed Piedmontese appetizer to start, alongside the truffle-based products the family also sells, jams and honey built around the same ingredient you just watched Kelly find. Then raw meat, grated tableside with black truffle (white truffle can be added on request, at extra cost, depending on the season). A cheese course follows: typical Langhe cheeses like toma, montecenere and castelmagno, paired with a fig-and-Barolo jam, a Muscat-and-pear conserve, and an onion confit to cut through the richness. Dessert is the region's own hazelnut cake. Wine and water run throughout, with a glass of Barbaresco DOCG and one of Dolcetto d'Alba DOC poured to match the food.

None of it is plated for show. It's the meal Massimiliano's own family would put together for people they wanted to properly feed, six courses because that's what it takes to do the truffle justice, not because anyone's counting.

Between the walk in the woods and everything that follows at the table, plan on the better part of a morning, roughly three hours start to finish. It's the version of the experience for anyone who came to the Langhe to slow down, not just to check a box.