For literally his entire life, Dr. Tom Michaels has been involved with the science and art of growing mushrooms and truffles while growing up on the family mushroom farm in Naperville, Illinois, in the 50s, Michaels fondly remembers his mom’s homemade mushroom soup that she made with fresh, home-grown Portobello mushrooms.  At that time, portobellos were sold as “off-grades” –long before mushroom farmers were aware of the treasure they had in them!
After graduation from the University of California, Berkeley, and a stint as an organic chemist with Shell Development Co., Tom received his M.S. degree from the University of Nevada, Reno, researching–what else!–mushrooms.  At Oregon State University, Michaels’s Ph.D. dissertation was on the cultivation of Perigord truffles, where he pioneered techniques that laid the groundwork for growing them in North America.

However, in order to support his growing family, Tom put aside his speculative dreams of growing truffles and worked “real jobs” in mushroom research and development for Dole Foods and Monterey Mushrooms, Inc. 

But in 1999, he returned to truffle cultivation in earnest in the foothills of the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of east Tennessee.  Tom discovered he had found both the perfect climate and hospitable soil to bring his lifelong dream to fruition.  Finally science, intuition and years of caring all came together, and in 2007 he produced one of the first commercial crops of American-grown Perigord truffles.  Perhaps even more important, their quality was declared superb by such leading chefs as Daniel Boulud, Jonathan Waxman, and John Fleer.