From a colonial-goods shop to a liqueur maker in the vineyards.

Cappelletti is the trading name of the Antica Erboristeria dott. Cappelletti, a small family firm that makes aperitivi, amari, grappas and liqueurs in Aldeno, in Trentino in northern Italy. Its founder was Giuseppe Cappelletti, an herbalist and apothecary from Ciago di Vezzano, a village near Trento. The company’s website said in 2013 that in 1909 he and his brothers set up a business “for the wholesale and retail sale of colonial goods” on Via Oss Mazzurana in Trento; English Wikipedia and the Trento newspaper l’Adige, in 2018, also give 1909. The date is not settled, however: the company’s current English-language site says the family has made bitter liqueurs and aperitifs “since 1906,” the American importer Haus Alpenz gives 1906, and l’Adige reported in January 2025 that the business began in 1906 as a colonial-goods company.

The shop moved to Piazza Fiera in central Trento, the company says in the 1920s and l’Adige says from 1912, and it was there, after the First World War, that Giuseppe Cappelletti created Elisir Novasalus, the amaro that became the house’s best-known product. The business then passed to his nephew Ferrante, the son of his brother, who ran it with his children Gianpaolo, Sandra and Corrado, the company says. Production moved in 1969 to a new plant at Ravina, on the edge of Trento, while the Piazza Fiera shop stayed open.

As the family firm grew, the siblings divided it. The company says Gianpaolo Cappelletti kept the liqueur business and began building a new complex at Aldeno, about 20 kilometres south of Trento; production has been based there since 2001, l’Adige reported. The firm is now run by Gianpaolo’s children, Luigi and Maddalena Cappelletti, the fourth generation: in 2018 l’Adige described Luigi as responsible for production and Maddalena for markets, marketing and communications, and put the company at eight employees and about 250,000 bottles a year.

A wine-based aperitivo, and a smoky rhubarb amaro.

Outside Italy the house is best known for Aperitivo Cappelletti, which l’Adige says is known locally as the “specialino.” Unlike many red bitters, it is made on a base of white wine: Haus Alpenz lists Pinot Bianco, Garganega and Trebbiano grapes and says the colour comes from natural carmine. The company says the wine is blended with herbs and spices steeped in alcohol, stirred by hand each day during maceration, and then left to settle before it is filtered and bottled.

The aperitivo has become a spritz base far from Trentino. l’Adige reported in September 2018 that the Cappelletti spritz was fashionable in Hong Kong and that the aperitivo was exported to the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Spain and the Netherlands; the paper gave the usual mix as one part aperitivo to two parts prosecco, topped with soda. In the United States it is imported by Haus Alpenz, which says all of Cappelletti’s production is still carried out in-house by the fourth generation of the family, surrounded by vineyards and apple orchards at Aldeno, and which ties the drink to the spritz tradition of the Triveneto, the three north-eastern regions around Venice.

Two amari complete the picture. Sfumato, an amaro made with rhubarb, has a smoky, herbal character, the Wall Street Journal reported in a September 2019 piece by Monique Truong headlined “Decoding a Smoky Italian Drink.” Elisir Novasalus, the house amaro made with about 30 herbs, was the company’s best seller in 2018, l’Adige reported; the Novasalus name became so familiar locally that the company recalls T-shirts, caps and rulers carrying it. The wider range includes grappas, the mulled-wine Brulé Bacchus, the Pasubio amaro and the fuchsia-coloured Mazzura aperitif, whose colour the company says comes from flowers and fruit.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all drinks names: Founders, Coors Light, Akashi, Proper No. Twelve, UV, Cappelletti and Select. Drinks brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family houses that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a bar list.

A drinks brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle or can than by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its drinks are actually made and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its drinks are made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A family house that kept its scale.

Cappelletti’s story is one of a firm that stayed small and stayed in the family. The company’s 2013 history said that few Trentino firms could mark a century of uninterrupted activity in the hands of the same family, and noted that hand-operated presses were still in use beside modern steel tanks. The old shop did not last: l’Adige reported in January 2025 that the Antica Erboristeria Cappelletti shop on Piazza Fiera, which had sold herbal teas and cosmetics from a separate branch of the family, had closed at the turn of the year, while the liqueur range remained on sale at the Aldeno works.

The name needs care online. “Cappelletti” is also a stuffed pasta from Emilia-Romagna and a common Italian surname, and the domain cappelletti.it belongs to an unrelated Italian shoemaker; the drinks company’s site is cappellettinovasalus.it.

For a design guide, Cappelletti shows how a family herbalist’s name, a single ruby colour and a wine-based recipe can travel from a Trento shop to spritz bars abroad without losing their local accent. Compare Averna, the Sicilian amaro from Caltanissetta, and Amaro Montenegro, the Bologna amaro of 1885. For this guide we use ruby, claret and alpine green with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Cappelletti’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.