Spelt Penne Rigate 400g - Artisan Italian Bronze-Drawn Pasta from Basilicata | Pasta Alica

Perfect for a traditional ragù, a rosé sauce, creamy mushrooms, grilled vegetables, or a perfectly browned pasta bake: the deep ridges of penne rigate were designed for one thing—holding the sauce both inside and out, until the very last bite.

A penna is recognizable by its slanted cut, shaped like the quill pen from which it takes its name, and by its fine ridges that grip the sauce. These are made from Italian spelt, with that delicately nutty taste you don't find in ordinary pasta.

In 1865, near Genoa, a pasta maker from San Martino d'Albaro, Giovanni Battista Capurro, obtained a patent for a machine that cut pasta diagonally without crushing it. The penna—the quill—had just been born, with its signature diagonal tip that is unmistakable. It is one of the few types of pasta for which we know the exact date of birth.

Pasta Alica has been upholding this same craftsmanship since the 1920s in Laurenzana, in the province of Potenza. It all began with Grandmother Anna, helped by two of her thirteen sons, Rocco and Francesco, who opened a small grocery store for local farmers. In 1928, this shop became the wholesale house of Michele Crisci, one of the most important in Southern Italy, and that same family passion continues to guide Pasta Alica today.

Here, durum wheat gives way to Italian spelt, one of the oldest grains on the peninsula. The flour is worked with pure water from Lucania, then the pasta is bronze-extruded, giving each penna a slightly rough surface designed to retain the sauce inside and out. It is then dried slowly, in the traditional manner, to preserve its texture and character.

  From the very first bite, something happens in your mind before you have even finished chewing. The brain recognizes that nutty, sweet, slightly rustic taste, and it doesn't try to analyze it: it feels it. First, a sense of calm, like stepping into a kitchen where someone was waiting for you. Then, a quiet joy, the kind found at a table in Italy where no one is watching the clock, where the sauce has been simmering all morning, and where every bite is a small gift. And deep down, that sweet, almost sugared nostalgia for a Sunday you think you've already experienced, even if you never have. The flavor lingers on the palate, and the emotion lingers even longer.

You don't buy penne rigate for an ordinary meal. You buy them for that moment when the sauce surges into every ridge, when every bite tastes like a Sunday in Italy, when the house smells wonderful and no one wants it to end.

And tonight, here, between two chores and an evening passing by too quickly, these penne are turning in a pot somewhere in Canada. For the time it takes for a sauce to simmer, you are somewhere else—in Basilicata, where this gesture has never changed.

Why our customers love them:

• 🇮🇹 Made in Italy, in Basilicata
• 🌾 Italian spelt, with a delicately nutty taste
• 🥉 Bronze-extruded for a rough surface that holds the sauce
• 💧 Made with pure water from Lucania
• 🕰️ Slow-dried, the traditional way
• 🍝 Slanted cut and deep ridges, ideal for ragù, rosé sauce, creamy mushrooms, grilled vegetables, or a gratin
• 👵 Italian family heritage passed down since the 1920s