And Left Coast Estates is at the the head of the harvest.
Text by Martin Cizmar
Images by Amanda Leigh Smith
Left Coast Estate owner Bob Pfaff is expanding the company’s offerings to include truffles, inoculating hazelnut trees, oaks, and shrub roses with the fungi’s spores.
A generation ago, the most famous agricultural product to emerge from the lush agricultural lands of the Willamette Valley was the hazelnut, known locally as the filbert. Today, the valley is best known for its 500 vineyards, which turn out some of the world’s great pinot noirs. But, quietly, the filbert is making a comeback. About 70,000 acres of the area’s farmland are planted with hazelnut trees—double the number of vineyard acres—and that number is growing by about 8,000 acres each year.
Bob Pfaff, owner of Oregon vineyard and winery Left Coast Estate, planted two acres of filberts at his family’s 490-acre spread in the tiny town of Rickreall. But he doesn’t plan to harvest them. Rather, those hazelnut trees are part of his plan to glean yet another prized agricultural product that grows better in Oregon than anywhere else in the nation, one that happens to be the most valuable agricultural product in the world: truffles.
Oregon’s truffle industry began with the foraging of native truffles, of which there are four, including a species (Tuber oregonese) officially described and named in 2010. Now the industry also includes farmers like Pfaff, who are leading the region’s efforts to farm the famous Périgord truffle, also known as the French black truffle, a European varietal. “There effectively isn’t a truffle-harvesting industry anywhere else in the United States,” says Charles Lefevre, organizer of the Oregon Truffle Festival, the only event of its kind in the country. “Oregon owns the brand.”
Truffle farming starts with hazelnut trees—or, rather, with the roots of a tree like hazelnut, pecan, or oak that have been inoculated with truffle spores. These spores might mature and bear truffles in five years, ten years, or never. Once the fungi produce, they might go on producing or go dormant for another dozen years. Pfaff knows things are going well when he sees his grass dying.
“As the roots grow, the truffles kill off the competition, so if you look around the bottom of the tree, you’ll see other stuff dying off,” he says, pointing to a dead circle of grass below one of his hazelnut trees. “The French call this the brûlée—the burn, like a crème brûlée —and that’s a good sign that they’re down there.”
Bob Pfaff and his wife, Suzanne, bought the first 175 acres of their vineyard in 2003 after they moved to Oregon from France, where Bob worked in finance and Suzanne worked in publishing. A large section of that is set aside to preserve Oregon white oak, which is the focus of conservation efforts across the region. “Only two percent of the valley’s oaks remain, so we’re hellbent on preserving as much of it as we possibly can,” Bob Pfaff says.
Some of these oaks, as well as some of the shrub roses on his property, have also been inoculated with truffle spores. Those plantings are the start of a long waiting game—and lots of work without any immediate return. The soil’s pH must be kept within a certain range, and the fungi must be watered regularly during dry spells, as research shows that truffles tend to prefer moist soil. The Pfaffs also have to ward off chipmunks and other varmints.
Finally, each December, they’ll start a four-month harvest schedule that involves bringing in a trained animal with a good nose—Left Coast Estate’s hospitality manager Will Craigie, a truffle enthusiast, is training up a young Lagotto Romagnolo dog—to prowl the property for truffles once a week. This winter, the Pfaffs hope to begin their first production of truffle products to sell or gift to members of the estate’s wine club.
In another few decades, the vineyard will have more truffles coming, courtesy of slow-growing Mediterranean oaks planted by the Pfaffs which might take 30 years for truffle fruiting. Then, perhaps, more hazelnut trees. The hazelnut is an ideal host for truffles, Pfaff says, because it is relatively fast growing and allows for truffles to mature evenly. And, in the Willamette Valley, it blends right in.
The 2020 Oregon Truffle Festival includes dinners, talks, truffle hunts, and other events in Eugene and the Willamette Valley between January 23 and February 16.