The first thing Mr. Libero Sinkovic showed me in their cellar was a wooden box used by his family to transport wine products to Emperor’s court in Vienna… the former capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire…

There were many other stories Mr.Libero shared with me but I leave them to discover it on your own if you visit the family…

Before leaving SAN MAURO… Mr. Libero told me another nice thing I noticed… he spoke about Jack and Gigi like about family members… he told me: “You cannot imagine how much Jack and Gigi helped my family to promote SAN MAURO… “

I mentioned at the beginning that Jack & Gigi are the guardians of Sinkovic property… and I named them the Marketing Directors of the property…

Jack is 15 years old Mexican pig truffle hunter and Gigi is a 4 years old Vietnamise pig that family Sinkovic received thanks to the famous Circus owner Moira Orfei. They are both very peaceful and are freely roaming around the courtyard and the village… playing with guests as a dog or a domestic cat would do.

You can find Jack and Gigi in books, pictures, videos about Istria… but they were also in The Washington Post article published on 19th of November 2010 and written by Anja Mutic - a New York-based travel journalist and coauthor of "Lonely Planet Croatia." I am pleased to post a part of the article that was read by over half million of people:

“… I'm in the courtyard of San Mauro Agrotourism, a farm and restaurant in northern Istria, a heart-shaped peninsula in the northern Adriatic region of Croatia. And I've just seen the light.

I've never cared for truffles, the smelly subterranean fungus that grows in the dark forests here. I just didn't get what all those people have raved about for centuries, describing truffles as "black diamonds," putting them on gastronomic pedestals, paying astronomical prices for a handful of these gnarly wrinkled tubers. Their taste left me cold. Until my first taste of tartufone, my moment of conversion.

As I savor the delicious dumpling, I chat with Dora and Libero Sinkovic, the owners of San Mauro. Two pigs, their pets and guardians, laze nearby. Jack, a 12-year-old Mexican pig, and Gigi, a 4-year-old Vietnamese sow - cultural diversity is alive and kicking in Croatia's countryside - have recently retired from their truffle-hunting careers. Until not long ago, they roamed the forests of Istria, sniffing for truffles that no human can espy.

Truffles, which grow underground, emit an aroma that sows in particular are very sensitive to, as it's similar to that of a hormone found in boars just before mating. Sows literally become sex-crazed in their hunt for truffles. They get so greedy that they dig as fast as they can and try to devour the fungus before the hunter can pick it. Libero and Dora tell me that many a hunter has almost lost fingers trying to contain the sows' excitement. That's why truffle-hunting pigs are often tethered to ropes, to control their urges and make for more successful foraging.

These days, to avoid these difficulties, dogs are more commonly used for truffle hunting in Istria. Truffle-hunting dogs, called breks, are mostly mongrels who begin training at 2 months. Training is a tricky job, so only a fraction of breks go on to have full-fledged careers as truffle trackers…”