Pistachios

The pistachio is the fruit of the pistachio, a small deciduous tree. Its origin is from Iran and its first traces are located on 7th millennium BC. Among the plants that became known from the conquests of Alexander the Great is the pistachio. His period Byzantium, the pistachios were popular and the tavern owners offered them as a meze along with the wine. Today pistachios are widely grown in Asia, the Mediterranean countries and the America.

The first organized pistachio plantation in Aegina created, the 1896, on his estate Nikolaos Peroglou, bringing seeds probably from Syria, and from there the pistachio first spread to Attica and then to the rest of Greece. THE Aegean pistachio utilizes the poor, calcareous soils of the island, which in combination with the dry environment, the limited irrigation and the proximity to the sea give the fruit special organoleptic characteristics, excellent taste and aroma so that The pistachio of Aegina is rightly characterized as the best in the world.

Peanuts are characterized as a super, concentrated food. It is one of the few foods that in a small amount give us a plethora of beneficial ingredients.

Since 1997 the Aegean pistachio is a PDO product.

With an acreage of around 300 kg, 700 inhabitants of the island - most of whom are not farmers - cultivate the pistachios. Half are members of the local Agricultural Cooperative of Peanut Producers (1947), which has undertaken the collection, processing, standardization and marketing of Aegina pistachio, while the rest either market the product themselves or sell it to wholesalers of fruit standardizers. The production of Aegina pistachios reaches 600-800 tons per year. Iran has the largest production in the world. The United States, Turkey and Syria follow. Greece is first in Europe and sixth in the world with 9.500 tons per year.

We visited and saw up close how they produce pistachios some producers like the Eleni Kypraiou and Nikos Tzitzis.