The black winter truffle is considered the creme de la creme of all the black truffles. That's the one that goes for about $800 a pound. But, it's always in short supply. There's a truffle that grows wild in China that is a dead ringer for it, but has, like, maybe 2% of the smell . . . but it looks just right. So, for a while, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, there was this huge surge of truffles being dug in China, shipped to Italy or France, and then sold as black winter truffles–French black winter truffles or Italian black winter truffles. But, they were all Chinese.
And, the numbers were huge. One dealer in Italy was caught with 47 tons of these Chinese truffles in their warehouse, like, 10 years back. So, it was–probably a significant amount of the black truffles being sold in the world were completely fake and were actually these Chinese truffles. And, I don't think that's true anymore, but there was a dark era there.
