Simone Calugi of Selektia Tartufi’s passion for truffles goes way back to when he was a child.
And since childhood, Simone has also cultivated a passion for truffle scales and otherwise.
“In the afternoons at home when I was studying and doing homework,” says Simone Calugi of Selektia Tartufi, “the scale was always on the table next to me.
My parents were away on business and when truffle hunters would ring the doorbell, I would welcome them into the house and I would use the scale to weigh their truffles.
At that time the amounts of truffles that were collected by each truffle hunter were much larger than now, so I used one of those old chicken scales. It wasn’t a very accurate scale but it didn’t matter because they really delivered a lot of truffles each time.”
Today, many years later, Simone Calugi in his daily “rounds” to collect fresh truffles from truffle hunters in San Miniato, the Crete Senesi and all the best areas of Tuscany, when he has to weigh fresh truffles he instead uses a modern electronic precision scale that he always carries in his car and that allows him to weigh even very small quantities of freshly harvested truffles accurately.
Having the opportunity to pick the best and freshest truffle directly from the hands of truffle hunters, sometimes even inside the forest is certainly Simone Calugi’s main activity during harvesting periods.
Simone Calugi still has a passion for antique scales, two-arm scales, hanging scales, portable scales, two-plate scales, and spring scales, and today he enjoys collecting them.
He proudly displays them and some he keeps in his office in Tuscany in Castefiorentino a few kilometers from San Miniato. The years go by, but the passion for truffles certainly does not go away, and above all the close bond with the territory and the truffle hunters to unearth, directly in the woods, the best excellences of our extraordinary territory and bring them to our tables in Italy and the World.
