A white truffle morning in Motovun

White truffle season in inland Istria falls between October and November, and a morning of it runs from the forest floor to your table by lunch.

By early October the mornings cool over the Mirna valley and the white truffle rises in the oak woods above Motovun. For a few weeks the interior of Istria holds one of the finest truffle grounds in Europe, a short drive from the house and, in those weeks, the whole reason to be here.

You are collected after the first coffee and taken up to the tree line, where a hunter waits with two or three Lagotto Romagnolo, the curly water dog bred for this single purpose. You walk behind them as they read the ground, and the moment one settles and begins to dig the hunter is beside it, easing it back and lifting from the soil something pale and knuckled that he holds up for you to breathe in. The scent stays with the car the whole way back down the hill.

This is ground with a record to it. The largest truffle ever unearthed came out of the woods near Buzet, a little to the north, in 1999, and stands in the Guinness records at 1.31 kilograms. Buzet wears the title of truffle capital and marks the season with its festival, Subotina, and a vast truffle omelette cooked over an open fire in the square.

The finest part waits at the house. Your truffle returns with you and is shaved, raw and translucent, over softly folded eggs or hand rolled pasta at your own table by early afternoon. A truffle gives its best in its first hours, and here that is exactly how you have it, at the peak, in the calm of a house that is yours, among the people you brought with you.

The season belongs to October and November, the quiet months of the year, and your concierge holds the morning the weather favours and speaks with the hunter in advance. Your part is to follow the dogs into the trees.