Alba truffle fair opens 10 October with prices up to €8,000/kg

The Alba truffle fair opens on 10 October and runs every weekend to 6 December, built around the Alba White Truffle World Market where certified tuber magnatum pico is weighed, graded and sold to buyers from across Europe.

Early pricing for this year's harvest sits at roughly €3,000 to €6,000 a kilo, with the top end of the market's certified lots reaching €8,000 or more depending on size, aroma and how early in the season they are dug. Prices move weekly as supply catches up with early demand, and the fair itself publishes the going rate rather than leaving it to vendors to quote.

Piedmont's white truffle season runs from October through December, tracking the first cold, damp nights that push the fungus to develop its aroma underground. Hunters and their trained dogs work the forests around Alba, Murazzano and the Roero hills before first light, when the scent carries furthest.

The fair sets the price that every restaurant and shop in town quotes for the rest of the week.

A market that sets its own price

Unlike most food fairs, the World Market functions as a genuine trading floor: certified truffles are graded on-site, and the price a given lot fetches that weekend becomes the reference figure quoted in restaurants and shops for days afterward. A small, early-season specimen can still run a buyer well over a hundred euros.

Restaurants across Piedmont adjust menus to the calendar rather than the other way round, shaving truffle fresh at the table only once the season's first deliveries clear quality checks.

Alba's other draw

The fair gives Alba's kitchens their busiest stretch of the year, and dishes built around the truffle rarely stray from a short list of classics: tajarin al tartufo bianco, the region's egg pasta shaved tableside, and carne cruda all'albese, the raw veal starter that gives the truffle nothing to compete with. Both predate the fair by decades; the fair just gives them their busiest weeks. Book a table in Alba this month and the truffle on it was very likely dug that same week.