Rustichella d'Abruzzo

Rustichella d'Abruzzo traces to 1924, when Gaetano Sergiacomo, son of a family of Abruzzo millers, left the family milling business to open his own pasta factory, Pastificio Gaetano Sergiacomo, in the town of Penne. His daughter, Nicolina Sergiacomo Peduzzi, grew up in the workshop, and in the early 1980s she and her husband Piero Peduzzi revived her father's original whole-wheat pasta recipe and renamed the company Rustichella d'Abruzzo. The company remains family-run, now led by Piero and Nicolina's children, Gianluigi and Maria Stefania Peduzzi. Production still uses bronze dies, which give the pasta's surface a rough texture that holds sauce, and a slow drying process the company describes running up to 50 hours at low temperatures, versus the few hours common in industrial pasta. The company has also worked on reviving ancient regional grain varieties through its Primograno project. In 2024 the company marked 100 years since Gaetano Sergiacomo's first production run.