An Italian producer in the Trentino valley that has been taking the alcohol out of wine since 2012.
Princess began in 2012 in Lavis, a town in the Trentino valley north of Verona, when Michele Tait wrote up a study on lowering the alcohol in the wines then on the market. He came to the question after years in the cellar and the vineyard rather than from outside the trade, and what he was answering was a demand the shelf was not meeting.
The first bottles still carried a little alcohol, enough to sit under the limit that lets a drink be called analcolica in Italy. The line that carries the name arrived the year after, and it is made the longer way round: the wine is vinified in full and the alcohol drawn out afterwards, without chemical treatment. Princess is direct about what that leaves, and about what it is not, which is grape juice or must.
The name is the Italian word for alternative, and it was chosen to say plainly what the range was for. It runs through still whites, rosés and reds, a set of sparkling Bollicine from dry through extra dry to sweet, and an aperitivo alongside them. All of it is made in Lavis.
- Producer
- Princess Alternativa
- Founded
- 2012
- Sizes
- 750 mL
