Scorzone is a truffle that offers a summer full of forest scents. The story of the Master Quarryman and Guardian of the forest Pino Crestini is eloquent.
The best time to taste the scorzone copiously is certainly from the beginning of June to the end of August, but we find it present almost all year round.
Above all, scorzone is found throughout Italy and is very ubiquitous, almost like albidum can certainly be found in many areas of Italy.
The habitat of the scorzone is variable: it starts from the sea and reaches up to 700 meters and lives in contact with several plants: hornbeam, downy oak, turkey oak and hazelnut.
Scorzoni have been found near the sea, but also in the parks and gardens of our cities.
A nugget of tuber aestivum quarried in the city is possible (increasingly rarely, but it is possible), in those well-kept parks, in those really well-kept and tidy pitches. Surely the summer scorzone can be perceived from a coarse rind and with a more pyramidal period.
Its places of choice are: Romagna, the Triveneto and Lombardy, but also the whole of the Central South.
A single plant can give half a kilo of truffles each time, but then it stops for a year.
The tuber aestivum certainly offers great nuggets and keeps well.
Other countries also produce it: Iran, but above all the Balkan countries.
Let’s reveal a secret: the ripe scorzone is very good, but be careful when its gleba is white, then it means that it is immature and some people pass it off as white truffle and some slyness takes advantage of it. You don’t fall for it.
Unfortunately there is no culture around the world of truffles and the braggart and improvisers get married and pretend to be connoisseurs.
If we do not know the harvesting periods of the various truffles, if we do not know all the edible truffles, where the color always gives a clear meaning to the peridium and the gleba is emblematic as it appears in its maturity, we are not experts in truffles at all.
Many just fill their mouths, I see many with a knowledge of truffles equal to zero, improvisation instead is equal to a thousand.