High up in a cave in the Sibillini mountains of Le Marche, before the church put a stop to it, the locals of Amandola, used to pop up to ask a female seer, the Sybil, (no relation to Basil) what the future held.

They also did other stuff but that’s another story (Amandola, a local town, does mean, “loving her” after all). At a local fair beneath these fabled Sibillini in Le Marche, you’ll see what look like large yellow brains sitting under laboratory glass….yes, it’s that time of year again. Table Diamonds, they call them or truffles.

But unlike diamonds whose supply and thus price is carefully controlled, these jewels are genuinely scarce and hard to find with prices to match depending on the season. If the prices leave you a little jittery you could either ask the Sibyl if you’re going to win the lottery or  you could try a 100% natural sauce available from Pasta and Truffles (www.pastaandtruffles.co.uk).  The crafty maker in Le Marche uses potatoes (who knew?) to help amalgamate the truffles into a smooth sauce without masking their fabulous flavours. There are no preservatives whatsoever.  So when it comes to opening the jar you just add a little cream to act as the flavour conveyor that truffles need and you’re ready to go. What kind of pasta?

Well you won’t go wrong with a specialist pasta, also from Pasta and Truffles,  which is cut with bronze leaving a rough, unshaven feel which is perfect for the truffle-charged sauce to cling to. Add to that, mountain water and very select durum wheat from the Abruzzi which is dried at low temperature to keep the delicate aromas and you have an ideal companion. But what to pair them with? Something sparkling perhaps. But the strong flavor of the truffle can easily overpower an average prosecco.  With the money you saved on the truffles, time to fork out and get that bottle of champagne or perhaps not. If you nose around really hard in the foothills of the Sibillini, amongst the many truffle fields zealously guarded with chain-link against the ravages of wild boar and sneaky neighbours, you might just stumble across a cantina producing an award winning metodo classico that has the grunt to handle those musky earthy flavours.

Tucked away in the Val D’Aso is a family run winery that, when I visited it eight years ago, was producing unremarkable wines. One oenologist and a lot of patience and investment later, things have changed. If you ask nicely but with a slightly crazed look in your eye (not difficult for lovers of bubbly),  you will be shown into the holy of temperature controlled holies where you’ll find hundreds of bottles with crowns huddled together in the dark, roommates together for over two years where their complex bready flavours have been getting it on in the bottle. The yeast cells add character and depth to a wine made from a local variety, Passerina and the famous Sangiovese in bianco. The results are a white metodo classico that scored up in the 90’s in a blind tasting in Tuscany and one very proud wine-maker, Gabriele Vitali (www.casalevitali.com). He explains how the contact with the dead yeast cells in the bottle yields a wine that is more stable and complex than any prosecco.

Award winning bubbly maker Gabriele Vitali

He’s even experimenting with leaving the Sangiovese juice on the skins a little to produce a pink  sparkling metodo classico that holds its own against Champagne and whose hints of red fruit and acidity give you a sparkling wine that cuts through the creamy base of the sauce with a complexity to match the truffle’s.  I predict you will not be disappointed.