The story
Aegina Pistachio Festival in Aegina
Aegina Fistiki Fest, created in 2008 with Aegina Municipality backing, celebrates the island's pistachio harvest each September, a crop traced back to 1896 when an Athenian planter's poor, dry twenty-acre plot unexpectedly produced a rich pistachio yield. The four-day festival follows the harvest calendar, opening on the second weekend of September with food tastings, cultural performances and local product stalls.
Aegina's pistachio orchards trace back to 1896, when an Athenian named Nikolaos Peroglou bought twenty acres of poor, dry island soil that failed most other crops but produced a surprisingly rich pistachio harvest, planting the trees that eventually made the Aegina Pistachio internationally known.