Massimo Mancini is an agronomist. In 2010, he founded Pastificio Agricolo Mancini, building on his family’s wheat farming in Le Marche, which goes back to 1938. His son Lorenzo is the fourth generation now involved. The company grows its own durum wheat, mills it, and makes the pasta, all on the same estate, and prints the harvest year on every packet. I asked him what that actually buys him, and what it doesn’t.
You grow your own grain and make the pasta in the middle of the field. What does that let you control that a pastificio buying its grain can’t?
Some buy grain, some buy semolina, among large producers and small ones alike. For us, the advantage of not buying the raw material lies in three things: building the ideal blend of durum wheat varieties in relation to where it’s grown, the Marche region, and to our own method of pasta-making; having continuity in a consistently high standard of semolina; and knowing in detail every decision made in the field about the durum wheat’s health and safety, everything behind the harvest.
You print the harvest year on the packaging and talk about “seasonal” pasta. What actually changes from one vintage to another, and why should a cook notice?
What can change are certain characteristics of the durum wheat tied to that year’s weather. Colour, for instance, is affected by rainfall, and there’s no way to correct it afterwards. Other characteristics typical of each vintage, unique and unrepeatable by definition, are protein content, which affects the pasta’s nutritional value and the gluten’s characteristics, and the grain’s specific weight, which affects milling yield.
Our goal is to limit those differences between vintages as much as possible by growing several durum wheat varieties and refining our milling and pasta-making techniques. The aim is for the differences to be imperceptible, both in the dish and from one vintage to the next. For us, the work consists of not letting the chef perceive these characteristics. He shouldn’t need to notice the vintage at all, except to be more aware than in the past that the pasta comes from an agricultural product.
How do you choose which durum wheat varieties to grow, and what do you look for in a variety?
Selection takes into account which varieties are best suited to express themselves in the Marche landscape, gentle rolling hills with varying exposure to the sun, and a mild climate, along with the agronomic cycle and the gluten index, a figure tied to our own vision of the pasta we want to produce. We contribute to the study and natural development of new durum wheat varieties, in collaboration with Oriana Porfiri, an expert cereal agronomist, in a region that has historically been at the forefront of cereal research.
Most of the industry works with anonymous, blended durum wheat, partly imported. Why do so few producers grow their own grain?
There are few growers because the worlds of pasta and grain are traditionally very separate: pastifici are built purely for processing, and are, on average, a long way from the fields. On top of that, growing directly is far more complicated than simply buying. And finally, the scale of industrial pastifici works against direct cultivation, because the volumes they need are hard to reconcile with the scale of agricultural production.
When judging a pasta, what should someone look at that almost always gets ignored?
Pasta should be judged on a set of characteristics. For us, the first is flavour; it has to clearly taste of wheat. Then: a balanced surface roughness, for the pasta’s ability to hold sauce; even cooking between the inside and outside of the pasta; a consistent bite; no breakage during cooking; even doneness held throughout; a soft, pale straw-yellow colour.
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Felicetti buys grain from farmers and millers who share his standards, then relies on an external mill to catch anything that went wrong in the field. Mancini’s model removes that outside step: the same estate grows the wheat, mills it, and shapes it into pasta.
The harvest year printed on the packet isn’t just a flourish; it’s a record. Because Mancini tracks each vintage’s rainfall, protein content, and specific weight, he can point to exactly why a given year’s pasta looks or behaves the way it does, and explain why the differences stay minimal despite real year-to-year variation in the wheat. The label doesn’t contradict the work of limiting that variation. It lets him account for it precisely enough to say the variation is there and still small.
Vertical integration gives him control over the blend of varieties, continuity in the semolina’s standard, and direct knowledge of everything decided in the field, control a producer buying semolina doesn’t have. A producer who buys grain can still make excellent pasta, but that route asks for its own kind of work: finding and vetting farmers and millers who share the same standards, rather than setting those standards on land you farm yourself.
Andreja Lajh is the founder of Haut de Gamme, a London-based PR agency working with chefs, restaurants and food producers worldwide. She writes about food, wine and the restaurant world at hautdegamme.net.
