Truffle Hunting in Tuscany: Compare the Hunts Before You Book

San Miniato

San Miniato, in the province of Pisa, sits on a hill roughly midway between Florence and Pisa and is the best-known white-truffle town in Tuscany. The hills around it are one of the historic white-truffle production zones named in Tuscan law, the Colline Sanminiatesi. Two listings start at a farm or a gate in the countryside near town, from $116.94 to $233.88, and the full day from Florence hunts near San Miniato too.

The town also holds the record for the largest white truffle ever found, 2,520 grams, dug up in 1954 and later given to US President Eisenhower. See our guide to the San Miniato white truffle fair for the autumn market weekends. Hunts here: hunt with lunch, hunt with tasting.

San Gimignano

The tower town anchors two hunts, both built around a farm lunch with wine. Podere la Marronaia and Tenuta Torciano both run three-hour experiences in the woods on their own land. San Gimignano has no train station, so reaching either farm without a car means the bus from Florence to Poggibonsi and then local bus 130, a combined trip of around 1 hour 45 to 50 minutes.

Hunts here: Torciano hunt and lunch, Marronaia hunt and lunch.

Chianti

The Chianti listing is our pick on rating: 5.0 from 93 reviews at $184, the same score as the full day from Florence at less than half its price. Cofferi 1242 runs a four-hour day on a farm near Greve in Chianti, about 20 minutes from Florence: an hour in the woods with a Lagotto Romagnolo, then a pasta class and a truffle lunch. The listing is marked likely to sell out.

See the Chianti hunt with pasta class.

The Siena hills

Two listings work the woods around Siena. Siena Tartufi meets at the Porta Romana gate in the city, which makes it one of the easiest hunts to reach on foot, and runs about 1 hour 20 minutes with the dogs. Le Pietre Vive meets at a restaurant car park in Castelnuovo Berardenga, south of Siena, with an English-speaking interpreter along. Hunts here: Siena hunt and tasting, Castelnuovo hunt.

The two differ in what you do after the woods. Siena Tartufi at $163.72 ends on a tasting, and Le Pietre Vive at $122.79 is the walk alone. South of Siena lie the Crete Senesi clay hills, the white truffle zone behind the San Giovanni d'Asso fair, held on 7-8 and 14-15 November 2026.

The Volterra hills

Volterra and the Alta Val di Cecina form a recognised white-truffle zone with its own market fair. The listing here is the lowest priced in the comparison, a two-hour hunt at $98 on a farmhouse in Peccioli, with a hunter certified since 2008. Note that the walk bans wheelchairs, strollers and open-toed shoes. See the Peccioli hunt near Volterra.

The hunter works his own dogs on the farm's land and lets you lift the truffle with the spade once the dog has marked it, which few other listings offer. The price covers the hunter, the dog and water for two hours, with no meal, so plan lunch in Volterra or Peccioli afterwards. The fair town has its own dates too: Volterragusto holds its white truffle weekends on 24-25 October and 31 October to 1 November 2026.

Day trips from Florence

If you have no car, the two full days from Florence solve the transport problem with a van. The seven-hour small-group day combines a hunt near San Miniato with lunch and a Chianti wine tasting, capped at 8. The eight-hour day trip adds San Gimignano and a castle-side hunt for $316.

Details in our guide to truffle hunting from Florence. Hunts here: full-day small group, Florence to San Gimignano day.

The hunter and the licence

Every hunter in Tuscany holds a tesserino, a licence obtained after a training course and an exam registered through the region's EDART platform. A hunter may work with a maximum of two dogs at a time. The hunter reads the ground for signs of truffle flies, soil and host trees, then lets the dogs work.

On the Peccioli listing the hunter has been certified since 2008, and on the Siena listing Alessandro has hunted for 25 years.

The dogs

Italian law requires the search to be carried out with a trained dog, and pigs are banned. On most hunts you will meet a Lagotto Romagnolo, the only breed in the world officially recognised for truffle searching, recognised by the FCI in 1995. The dog quarters the ground with its nose down, freezes or paws when it smells a truffle underground, and is rewarded, usually with a treat.

More in our guide to truffle hunting dogs.

The walk

Plan for about an hour of walking out of a two- to four-hour experience, or roughly 1 hour 20 minutes on the Siena listing. The ground under oak and poplar woods in autumn is wet leaf litter, mud and puddles, so the Chianti listing tells you to wear walking shoes and the Peccioli listing bans sandals outright.

The dogs set the pace, and the hunter follows them rather than a marked trail. On the Castelnuovo Berardenga hunt babies can come along in a carrier, while the Peccioli walk is closed to wheelchairs and strollers, so check the card before booking with small children.

The spade and the dig

When the dog indicates a spot, the hunter digs with a small spade called a vanghetto, limited in Tuscany to a blade of 5 centimetres, and any hole must be refilled with the same soil. On the Peccioli hunt you may dig a truffle out yourself. The law allows digging only where the dog has indicated, which is why the hunter leads.

Refilling the hole is part of the regional rules, not a courtesy, and the UNESCO listing names the extraction with the small spade, the cavatura, as half of the tradition it protects. If you want to lift the truffle yourself, the Peccioli listing is the one that says so.

What you taste afterward

The hunt-only listings end with a short tasting of truffle products, sometimes with wine, as at Nacci Tartufi near San Miniato. The lunch listings serve what the kitchen builds around truffle, such as the three-course truffle lunch at San Miniato or a truffle pasta lunch at Podere la Marronaia.

At Cofferi 1242 in Chianti you make the tagliatelle yourself before it is served with truffle, and at Tenuta Torciano near San Gimignano the lunch comes with the estate's wine and olive oil. On the Chianti listing a truffle the dog finds can be bought, which is the closest any listing here comes to taking one home.

Why nothing is guaranteed

Truffles grow wild underground and their quantity swings with the weather. Tuscan traders say white-truffle quantities have roughly halved compared with five or six years earlier after three lean seasons. No honest operator can promise the dog finds anything, and no listing on this site promises a white truffle. Treat a find as a bonus and the walk, the dogs and the food as the point.

Dry autumns hit hardest: traders tied the lean 2024 season, when San Miniato white truffle went above €4,000 a kilo, to dry conditions that roughly halved the harvest. A wet October is better news for the dogs than a sunny one.

The legal calendar

Book a hunt in the window that matches the truffle you care about. Outside these windows a species cannot be legally collected in Tuscany at all.

Which months to book

October and November are the strongest months for a first hunt, because the white truffle season is open and the woods are at their best. Digging hours are set month by month on solar time, roughly 7:00-18:00 in January and widening to about 4:00-21:00 in June. Full species detail is in our guide to the truffle season in Tuscany, and the differences between species in white truffle vs black truffle.

The autumn fair weekends

Three fair towns anchor the autumn. The 55th San Miniato white truffle fair runs on three November weekends, the 40th Crete Senesi fair at San Giovanni d'Asso runs on the first two weekends of November, and Volterragusto's autumn weekends fall at the end of October and the start of November. Pairing a hunt with a fair weekend is the simplest way to see and buy truffle at market prices.

San Miniato's 55th edition falls on 14-15, 21-22 and 28-29 November 2026, so a Friday or Monday hunt near the town pairs with any of the three weekends. Entry prices for the fairs were not published when this page was built.

Price by what you get

A hunt with lunch costs the most, a hunt alone the least, and the full days from Florence sit at the top because transport is included.

What the truffle itself is worth

For scale, San Miniato white truffle was quoted around €2,000 per kilo at the start of the 2025 season and a base of about €3,000 per kilo by November, and in the lean 2024 season it went above €4,000 per kilo. Black winter truffle retails around €350 to €600 per kilo and summer truffle around €100 to €350 per kilo. Full figures in our guide to white truffle price.

Listings that start at a farm

Every listing except the two full days from Florence meets at a fixed point you reach yourself: a winery near San Gimignano, a farm near Greve in Chianti, family properties and a marked gate near San Miniato, the Porta Romana gate in Siena, a restaurant car park in Castelnuovo Berardenga, a farmhouse in Peccioli, or a parking area off the Certaldo road. Only the two full-day tours from Florence pick you up in the city, and even they name a central meeting point, not your hotel.

The pickup contradiction

Three listings name hotel pickup in their Includes list while telling you to drive to the farm. The Chianti pasta-class hunt lists hotel pickup and drop-off but gives the Cofferi 1242 farm itself as the meeting point. The Peccioli hunt lists pickup and drop-off but sends you to Via della Bonifica 156 to park your own car.

The San Gimignano Torciano hunt names a pickup with no origin stated while giving the winery as the meeting point. If you have no car, confirm in writing with the operator, before you book, whether pickup actually exists and from where.

The train to San Miniato

San Miniato's station is San Miniato-Fucecchio, about 43 minutes from Florence Santa Maria Novella with roughly 45 direct trains a day, and 27 to 31 minutes from Pisa Centrale with about 43 direct trains. The station sits in the valley below the hilltop old town, and a taxi from the station to the hunt area costs about €30, arranged by phone on the lunch listing.

From Pisa Centrale the same station is 27 to 31 minutes away with about 43 direct trains a day, so a Pisa base works as well as Florence. The listing for the San Miniato hunt with lunch prints two different morning timetables from Florence, so check the current Trenitalia times the evening before.

The bus via Poggibonsi

San Gimignano has no train station. The standard route from Florence is the Autolinee Toscane bus to Poggibonsi, then local bus 130 to San Gimignano, a combined trip of around 1 hour 45 to 50 minutes, roughly hourly, with buses from about 6:10 to 19:50. Aggregators quote a one-way fare around €6.80 and a return around €13.60.

For Volterra, the bus from Florence via Poggibonsi takes roughly two hours, or line 500 runs from Pontedera about every two hours on weekdays.

The two full days from Florence by van

If you want the transport solved for you, the seven-hour full-day small-group hunt at $391.75 runs an air-conditioned minivan between Florence, the hunt near San Miniato, lunch and a Chianti wine tasting, with no hotel pickup. The eight-hour Florence to San Gimignano day at $316 includes round-trip van transport, a hunt, a truffle pasta lunch, a wine tasting and gelato in San Gimignano, capped at 8 travelers. Both are covered in our guide to truffle hunting from Florence.

The national law

Truffle collection across Italy sits under the national framework of Legge 16 dicembre 1985, n. 752. It requires the search to be carried out with a trained dog, allows digging only at the point the dog indicates, bans collection at night, defined as one hour after sunset to one hour before sunrise, and bans pigs for truffle searching. Secondary sources cite the pig ban to article 9, but the full official text could not be independently verified, so treat the article number with care.

The Tuscany regional law and the licence

Regionally, Legge Regionale 2 agosto 2023, n. 36 replaced the older L.R. 50/1995 and took formal effect on 25 January 2025, updating the harvest calendar to reflect climate change. Anyone searching for truffles in Tuscany needs a tesserino, obtained after a training course and an exam registered through the region's EDART platform. Hunting without one brings an administrative fine of €500 to €5,000 under the 2023 law, plus licence suspension and confiscation of the truffles.

The UNESCO listing

Truffle hunting and extraction in Italy was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity on 16 December 2021. The listing covers both the cerca, the hunt itself, and the cavatura, extraction with the vanghetto spade, and recognises the knowledge passed down orally between generations across the whole country, not only Tuscany.