In the past couple of weeks, there's been a lot of noise about the decline of the French Black Truffle or as they've been known for centuries, black diamonds. So few are being harvested in the truffle terroir of Southwest France that truffleculteurs are charging $2 grand a kilo for the fragrant fungi. Just how does a black truffle smell/taste? Musty, tunes of shitakes, porcini, slightly mouldy hay. Never underestimate the human taste for something slightly rotten.

Or are the French just miffed that one of their national foods is being so successfuly cultivated in New Zealand, the US, China! The modern truffle cultivation is scientific whereas the trad way of finding the black truffle in Var is romantic if not magical. Truffles grow on the roots of a local kind of dwarf oak and for centuries only the superior pig nose could root 'em out. However pigs are gourmands and tended to eat their finds. Also, truffle smugglers found that as they escaped with the swag, they got curious looks at the pig in the back seat. So dogs who aren't gourmands replaced pigs.

But France is now industrializing, urbanizing, the dogs don't get paid enough, the terroir is spoiled by global warming, the poster villain of every downturn. In any case much to truffleculteurs' chagrin, the French themselves are buying the black diamonds from China. Of course, the Chinese truffle doesn't taste like the French truffle and it may have food safety issues, but it costs less than $20 a lb.