Burgundy truffle season opens in eastern France

Burgundy truffle season has opened in eastern France, and Tuber uncinatum is now moving through wholesale markets at roughly €500 to €750 a kilo, depending on size.

The season opens by trade convention on September 15 and runs through December, later in a mild autumn. It falls between the accessible summer truffle, done by August, and the two grander varieties that follow it: white Alba from October and black Périgord from December.

Wholesale prices track size and grade

Burgundy truffle does the season's unglamorous work: cheaper, milder, and reliably on the plate before December's headline truffles arrive.

The Italian trade site Tartufo.com grades Tuber uncinatum by weight: €500 a kilo for truffles of 8 to 20 grams, €620 for 20 to 50 grams, and €750 for anything larger, an average of €655. Those figures were last refreshed on the site in January and, French merchants say, have held roughly steady into this season.

Retail runs higher. French truffle house Plantin lists a single 50-gram Burgundy truffle from €57.50, close to €1,150 a kilo once handling and packaging are added. Both prices sit well under white Alba truffle, which opened its season the week before averaging €1,853 a kilo, and under black Périgord, which closed its last run at €1,325 a kilo on the same wholesale listing.

Burgundy truffle's place on the calendar

The flavor explains the price gap. Tuber uncinatum reads as hazelnut and woodland rather than the sharper garlic-and-honey lift of white Alba truffle or the cocoa-and-earth depth of Périgord black. Trade descriptions consistently call it the milder, more forgiving of the three.

Unlike white Alba truffle, prized raw because heat kills its aroma, Burgundy truffle takes cooking well, closer in behavior to black Périgord. New stock arrives daily once the season is under way, Plantin notes on its own listings — a supply rhythm neither pricier variety can match this early in the year.

Botanists complicate the marketing, if not the plate. Current taxonomy places Tuber uncinatum inside the broader Tuber aestivum group, the same species sold as summer truffle. “Burgundy truffle” survives mainly as a trade name for truffles picked after mid-September, when cooler nights sharpen the aroma.

Kitchens already plating white Alba truffle for October's tasting menus are working Burgundy truffle into everyday service instead — the same risotto technique built for white truffle takes the warmer variety just as well. Chagny, the Saône-et-Loire town that hosts the Association des Trufficulteurs de Bourgogne's yearly market, has run it on the last Sunday of November for each of its past five editions — well before Périgord black opens the calendar's priciest stretch in December.