The plant is the pistachio of the Napoletana variety grafted onto wild terebinth, which in Bronte they call «scornabeccu»; the nut, in Sicilian, is the «frastuca». It grows on the lava soils of Etna, between 400 and 900 metres, in the territories of Bronte, Adrano and Biancavilla: this is the area written into the PDO specification, and the pistachio is also a Slow Food Presidium.
Harvesting is by hand and happens every two years, because the tree alternates a bearing year with a resting one. The grower hulls and dries the nuts and sells them in the shell to the companies that process them. In Bronte there are about 5000 growers, almost all with a hectare of land, and from these fields comes 90 per cent of Sicily’s pistachio: for the town it is «green gold».
Its deep green and its flavour go into creams, pesto, nougat, ice cream and granita all over Sicily, and in autumn Bronte holds its festival. Imitations labelled «di Bronte» are many: the PDO was created precisely to tell them apart.
