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Inside a cavernous tent pitched on a large paved plaza in Alba, Italy, The biggest and most famous white truffle market in the world takes place. The dark moustached man in the cowboy hat is keeping a close eye on the hundreds of dollars worth of truffles on the table in front of him. Each truffle is set out alone, with a price tag under it. Price is based on the ripeness of the truffle, the going market rate, and the supply of truffles anticipated each season. The truffles are weighed out on impeccably precise scales, and kept under clear plastic cake covers to contain and reinforce their aroma.

The reason these truffles are worth just hundreds, and not thousands, of dollars, is that they are summer truffles, Tuber aevestium, which have a nice appealing fruity smell (like our Alpovas or Leucangia carthusiana), but don't offer the aphrodasiac effect of the true truffles, or lend quite the flavor enhancing properties that the white truffle offers. Inside the tent that housed the truffle market, restauranteurs, truffle brokers, wholesale grocers, and connoisseurs bid for the day's catch. The truffle hunters and peddlers, on the other side of the counter, were a wild-looking bunch in a variety of curious hats and eccentric costumes.

The aroma of truffles permeated the inside of the tent so strongly that one woman in our party was overcome and had to leave to get air outside. The aroma, or stench, of truffles is like butter, sweet wine, and sexual excitement, and it can be overpowering. The atmosphere inside the tent was also charged with the excitement of so much money and mushroom changing hands. Besides raw truffles, large and small businesses sponsored a variety of truffle oils, preserves, and other truffle-laced items.