Farine de Châtaigne Corse IGP — The Island's Milling Tradition

Haute-Corse and Corse-du-Sud — châtaigneraie zone, above 400m altitude. IGP protected.

Farine de châtaigne corse — Corsican chestnut flour, IGP-protected — is the foundation of the island's most distinctive carbohydrate tradition. No other European cuisine uses chestnut flour as a primary staple at the same scale: in the Corsican interior it was the bread-flour equivalent from the Middle Ages through the nineteenth century, produced by family mills (moulins à eau or moulins à vent) scattered across the châtaigneraie — the chestnut forest belt that covers the granite highlands above 400m. The production sequence begins at the October–November harvest: chestnuts are dried for five to six weeks in a séchoir (drying house) over a slow wood or chestnut-husk fire, then stone-milled to a fine powder. The IGP specification defines the origin zone (specific Haute-Corse and Corse-du-Sud forest zones), the drying method (wood-fire séchoir, not industrial oven), and the milling method (stone-ground, not roller-milled). The resulting flour is beige-brown, faintly smoky, and deeply sweet — incomparable to Italian castagna flour, which is typically lighter-dried and less aromatic. Farine de châtaigne corse is the anchor of at least eight canonical Corsican dishes and the ingredient that most sharply defines what 'Corsican' tastes like.

• Farina di castagne (Tuscany/Ligurian — similar origin but lighter-dried, less smoke)
• Châtaigne farine (Ardèche, France mainland — mainland cognate, different milling tradition)

Beige-brown flour; deeply sweet chestnut note; faint wood-smoke from séchoir drying; richer, more aromatic than Italian counterparts.