Six generations of slow-dried pasta from the hills of Benevento.
- Founded
- 1846
- Where
- Benevento, Campania
- Ownership
- Family-owned, sixth generation
- Die
- Bronze
Lines
- Durum semolina
- Wholewheat
- Organic
- Gluten-free (dietary line — see note below)
- Egg pasta
- Legume
Lines change over time. Check the maker’s site for what’s currently produced, and for anything a dietary need depends on.
Story
The Rummo story starts in 1846, when Antonio Rummo set up a mill in Benevento, the inland Campanian town cradled in the wheat country of the Sannio, grinding durum carried in from Puglia and Campania. Those deliveries were hauled by three horses, Bruto, Bello, and Baiardo, and more than a century and a half later the same three still trot across the front of every box. The business passed down six generations of the family, who have a habit of alternating the names Antonio and Cosimo; by 1935 it had moved to Via dei Mulini — Mill Street — in what is now the historic heart of Benevento, and become a corporation. It remains family-owned today, run by Cosimo Rummo. In 1991 the company gave up milling entirely to concentrate on pasta alone. Its hardest chapter came in October 2015, when a violent flood gutted the factory; the recovery, carried by an outpouring of support from across Italy, became part of the house's story, and by 2021 Rummo had marked its 175th year.
How they make it
The heart of Rummo is a method it calls Lenta Lavorazione, "slow processing" — drawn from old artisan practice and formalized as a registered method in 2005. It runs directly against the industrial instinct to go fast. The durum is kneaded gently and at length with the pure water of the Sannio, pushed through bronze dies that leave each strand faintly rough so sauce has something to cling to, then dried slowly at low temperature rather than being force-dried in a hot tunnel. That patience is not just romance: slow drying protects the wheat's flavor and, more usefully, its structure, which is why Rummo keeps a firm bite and resists going slack even when it is overcooked or cooked twice — boiled first, then finished in the pan. The company leans hard on that reliability. In 2011 it became the first pasta in the world to have its cooking performance certified by an outside body, Bureau Veritas, which measures exactly how al dente a batch stays by testing its resistance to the bite.
What to look for
On the shelf, Rummo is the pasta in the boldly colored boxes with the three horses on the front, a look it adopted in a 2012 redesign. It sits a clear notch above supermarket staples in both price and performance without crossing into rarefied artisan territory — part of why it gets reached for by restaurant kitchens and home cooks alike. It forgives a great deal, but not everything: the same slow-dried backbone that holds the bite will turn chalky if you push it well past its time, so treat the package number as a ceiling, not a goal. The high-protein durum is central to the effect, and the organic and wholewheat lines are made with 100% Italian wheat. It is easy to find across the US, and its Spaghetti, Penne Rigate, and Fusilli all won Great Taste awards in 2022.