Everyone has their own kind of gold. In America, prospectors flocked to Nevada in search of precious metals. In Italy, the hills around Alba, the capital of the Langhe region, hold a different kind of treasure: the white truffle, a rare and fragrant delicacy that grows underground and has earned the nickname “white gold.”

Alba has celebrated this prized tuber with an annual fair since 1929, an event conceived by local entrepreneur Giacomo Morra. Since 1999, the fair has also hosted the World White Truffle Auction, where prices this year reached €5,000 per kilogram.

But the truffle’s story reaches well beyond the Langhe. To explore its ties to America, we spoke with journalist and essayist Bruno Quaranta, who, in this series of interviews, helps us trace the connections between Italian intellectuals and the United States, and the cultural bonds linking the two countries.

What is the connection between the truffle and America?

“It has long been a tradition to give truffles as gifts to prominent figures. Among the Americans who have received one are Presidents Harry Truman — whose truffle weighed 2,520 grams — Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Ronald Reagan; actresses Rita Hayworth and Marilyn Monroe, who received one when she married Joe DiMaggio; former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani; and John Snider, the Mayor of Medford, who had a particularly close relationship with Alba.”

How did that connection come about?

“We have to go back to the 1960s. One of the most popular television programs at the time was Campanile Sera, a game show hosted by Mike Bongiorno. Reporting from town squares across Italy were correspondents Enzo Tortora and Renato Tagliani, later replaced by Enza Sampò.”

What was the show about?

“Cities in northern and southern Italy competed against one another. In Alba, as in other towns, a kind of think tank was assembled to prepare for the challenge. Its members included Beppe Fenoglio, author of Il partigiano Johnny (Johnny the Partisan), a novel about the Italian Resistance that he wrote largely in English.”

Alba showcased what it was most proud of: its wines and its white truffles.

“Thanks to these treasures, the town’s reputation spread beyond Italy’s borders, strengthening its standing in places where it was already well known, including the United States.”

And how does Medford Mayor John Snider fit into the story?

“The truffle brought the two towns together. On July 24, 1962, the first transatlantic telephone call in European history was broadcast live, thanks to the American satellite Telstar 1. On the line were Osvaldo Cagnasso, the Mayor of Alba, and John Snider, the Mayor of Medford. A technological miracle met a natural one: over that 10,000-kilometer connection, surely none of the truffle’s extraordinary aroma was lost — an exquisite, almost mystical, wonderfully wild scent, one that would have put Marilyn Monroe’s Chanel No. 5 to shame.”

And where does the truffle appear in Italian literature?

“Quite explicitly, for example, in a story by Giovanni Arpino, author of the novel Il buio e il miele (Darkness and Honey), which was adapted into the film Scent of a Woman, earning Al Pacino an Academy Award. His story In Collina per Tartufi (Truffle Hunting in the Hills) portrays a farmer who sets out every night in search of the precious tuber, from September to November, ‘perhaps even until Christmas — nothing helps the dog more than snow: it wipes out every scent except the truffle’s delicate aroma.’

“Because it is the dog, guided by its extraordinary sense of smell, that finds the treasure buried underground.

“The truffle also appears more indirectly in La casa in collina (The House on the Hill) by Cesare Pavese, the writer and translator of Moby-Dick who introduced Italy, during the autarkic years of Fascist rule, to the great works of American literature. Pavese writes: ‘It is lovely to walk along the hills with a dog: as we make our way, he sniffs out and recognizes for us the roots, the dens, the ravines, the hidden lives, multiplying our pleasure in discovery. Ever since I was a boy, I felt that walking through the woods without a dog meant losing too much of life and of the earth’s mysteries.’”

— © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.