Say pistachio and the geolocation is immediate: Bronte. Yet, there is a small village in Basilicata that could rival the fame of the Sicilian town. We are talking about Stigliano, in the province of Matera. Currently, after Bronte, it is the place with the highest pistachio production in Italy, even though Sicilian volumes remain difficult to match.
To be fair, there are also pistachio plantations in Puglia, Tuscany and Calabria, but they are still not very productive due to the recent start of cultivation. As explained by Vincenzo Ricciuti of the Azienda Agricola Vincenzo Maria Ricciuti in Stigliano: «The plant is very slow. Ten years are the minimum time required to achieve economically sustainable production».
