Alba's white truffle fair runs to December in its 96th year
The World Truffle Market, chef-led dinners and cooking classes keep the Langhe hills busy through December 6, as this year's harvest finds its price.
Alba's International White Truffle Fair is into its 96th edition, running weekends from October 10 to December 6 across the town and the Langhe hills around it.
The fair gives the region its busiest stretch of the year, built around the hunt for Tuber magnatum Pico, the white truffle that grows wild under local oak and hazel woods and barely anywhere else with any reliability.
A market built for traders and tourists
A timed online ticket to the World Truffle Market doubles as entry to the town's truffle museum.
At its centre is the World Truffle Market, open weekends plus an extra Friday on November 1, where licensed hunters and dealers sell straight from stalls. A timed online ticket costs €6.30 and doubles as entry to MUDET, the town's truffle museum.
Around the market, organisers run 36 cooking shows over the fair's run, every Saturday and Sunday at 11am and 6pm, at €50 a head. Four "Unusual Dinners" pair Michelin-starred chefs with the town's historic venues at about €250 a person, and the Castle of Roddi runs hands-on cooking classes for €160.
The fair opened on October 4 with the Palio degli Asini, a donkey-race parody of Alba's old rivalry with nearby Asti, drawing crowds in medieval dress to Piazza Cagnasso for a free parade and a ticketed race.
Prices still move week to week
Unlike a harvest with a fixed calendar, truffle supply and price shift with rainfall and temperature through the season. This year's opening weeks were shaped by a hot, dry summer, which AMUSE tracked as the market priced early white truffle at €350-550 per 100g.
Restaurants across Piedmont built their autumn menus around that rhythm long before the fair existed in its current form, shaving truffle raw over tajarin or risotto rather than cooking it, a rule the market's own vendors still repeat to first-time buyers.
Organisers and local hunters point to November as the fairer month to buy, once cooler, wetter weeks bring heavier truffles to market at steadier prices. Either way, the market keeps trading every weekend until the first week of December, long after most of this year's grape and olive harvests have wrapped up.
