Meet the Maker – Amadeo for Sapore Di Sole

A selection of the ancient grain pasta by Sapore di Sole

Most of the pasta we grow up eating comes from a handful of modern wheat varieties, bred after the Second World War for yield rather than flavour. Amedeo, a farmer in Tuscany's Val d'Orcia, took a different path, reviving grains that had almost disappeared from Italian fields. This is his story, and why it changed how we eat pasta.

Three wheats that nearly disappeared

After the war, Italian agriculture chose efficiency. Modern, higher-yielding wheat replaced regional varieties that had been sown in the same valleys for centuries. Three of the ones lost along the way were Verna, a soft Tuscan wheat from the Mugello and Casentino hills that performs poorly under modern fertiliser; Senatore Cappelli, a durum wheat named after the senator who championed it in the early 1900s, sidelined by the 1960s Green Revolution; and Monococco, or einkorn – the first wheat ever domesticated, around 10,000 years ago, abandoned because it yields less and is harder to harvest. All three are grown again today, in small quantities, by farmers like Amedeo.

Farming in the Val d'Orcia

The Val d'Orcia is the UNESCO-listed stretch of Tuscany between Siena and Monte Amiata – clay and chalky soils, long dry summers, the kind of demanding ground that suits deep-rooted, drought-tolerant ancient wheats. Amedeo runs a filiera corta, a closed-cycle farm: he grows, harvests, mills and dries everything himself, with no brokers or anonymous flour in between. If something goes wrong with a harvest, he's the first to know, and the only one who can put it right.

Why the process matters

Three details separate this pasta from most of what's on supermarket shelves:

● Stone milling, done slowly and at low heat, keeps the grain's germ intact - along with its flavour and nutrients - rather than stripping it out the way commercial steel rollers do.

● Bronze drawing extrudes the pasta through a rough bronze die rather than a smooth Teflon one, leaving a slightly matte, textured surface that holds sauce properly.

● Slow drying at 40°C over fourteen hours (against the two to four hours at 80–100°C used industrially) keeps the pasta's structure and flavour intact, and makes it easier to digest.

The wider Sapore di Sole network

Amedeo is one farmer within a larger collective. Sapore di Sole has worked since 1999 with organic and biodynamic farmers across Tuscany and central Italy – among them Viviano and his wife in Valdarno, growing legumes and vegetables, and Lorenzo in Modena, making IGP balsamic vinegar. Their Tuscan tomatoes are processed within 48 hours of picking, and their ribollita recipe waits for the first icy nights of the year, when black cabbage tastes as it should.

"Organic is a serious matter, a concept to be kept clean, an idea worth struggling for, with its own ethics and soul." – Sapore di Sole.

It's a philosophy we recognise. It's the same one behind Farmer's Deli.

Shop Sapore di Sole Pasta online at the Farmer's Deli.