Truffle salt (Alba white truffle blended with sea salt)
Sea salt infused with genuine Alba white truffle (Tuber magnatum pico), Piedmont's most prized and scarcest culinary fungus.
| Origin | Piedmont, Italy |
| Indian subcontinent | No |
| Category | Fungi & Functional Mycology |
| Retail price band | Retail: as a salt (not fresh truffle), typical Alba truffle salt products retail in the €15–€60 per 50–100g range internationally depending on truffle percentage and dilution with truffle aroma compounds (industry norm, not independently price-audited here); this is far below fresh truffle pricing since salt is mostly a carrier. |
| Bulk / trade price band | Bulk/trade basis: fresh Alba white truffle itself trades at roughly €250–€800 per 100g (≈ €2,500–€8,000/kg), fluctuating sharply with season and drought conditions, per Piedmont regional tourism/trade sources (meetpiemonte.com); record individual specimens have sold for far more at charity auctions (Terra Ross reports a >€250,000 single-lot auction sale in Turin), which is an outlier, not representative of commercial-grade pricing. |
| Sourcing status | Dossier researched from public sources — producer contact not yet established |
| Compliance status | Preliminary review complete (see below) — not yet legally verified |
Detailed study
Tuber magnatum pico, the Alba/Piedmont white truffle, is one of the most scientifically and commercially documented fungi in the world; it forms ectomycorrhizal associations with oak, hazel, poplar and lime trees in specific calcareous soils of Piedmont (notably the Langhe and Monferrato hills around Alba), and cannot currently be reliably cultivated at scale, which underlies its extreme scarcity value.
Provenance & producer
Genuine Alba white truffle is hand-harvested using trained dogs (trifolau/truffle hunters) in a short autumn-winter season (roughly October–January) around Alba in the Piedmont region of Italy; authenticated Alba-origin product typically carries traceable trifolau documentation and, for premium lots, participation in the Alba truffle market/fair (Fiera Internazionale del Tartufo Bianco d'Alba).
Market & pricing
Piedmont regional sources report recent fresh Alba white truffle prices fluctuating between roughly €250 and €800 per 100g depending on season quality (meetpiemonte.com); truffle-salt finished products are a much lower-cost derivative since they use a small percentage of truffle (fresh or dried) or truffle aroma blended into salt, and should not be marketed with fresh-truffle-equivalent pricing.
Compliance & export
Tuber magnatum is not CITES-listed (CITES governs wildlife trade, not this fungus); the relevant compliance layers are EU food-traceability/PDO-style regional-origin claims (any 'Alba' or 'Piedmont' origin claim on packaging must be substantiated with supplier documentation to avoid misleading-origin claims) and, for import into India, FSSAI import registration and labelling rules for packaged foreign gourmet salt products.
Sources
- Alba's white truffle price, preservation and consumption
- Alba white truffle record auction sale (Terra Ross)
- The White Truffle of Alba, Piedmont (Italia.it)
Image status
A working reference photograph is in place, captured from a freely-licensed Wikimedia Commons source (File:Tuber Magnatum Pico (cropped).jpg). On Wikimedia Commons under the file's stated free licence — confirm exact CC tag on the file page before commercial use. Treat this as a placeholder for marketing purposes: exact licence terms should be re-verified on the Commons file page, and original producer photography is recommended before final trade use.