Experience Florence's Oldest Tradition One Glass at a Time
- brooke.davidson
- May 24, 2023
- 4 min read
By: Brooke Davidson
Florence’s streets may be narrow, but your waist won’t be after you indulge yourself in the restaurants this city has to offer on every street corner. Famous for its gelato and other classic Italian dishes, this city is not for the “faint of stomach.” However, wherever one is in Italy, the wine is ingrained into the culture of all its residents.
History of Florentine Wine
Towards the end of the thirteenth century, the artisanal craft of growing grapes and producing wine was practiced in the wine guild of Arte dei Vinattieri. Merchants and other sellers had to join Arte dei Vinattieri to legally deal wine across the country.
The Renaissance was also a big proponent for Florentine wine. Renowned artists like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci infused this wine culture into their work by featuring the drink in some way or another in their art.
Brands in Florence founded by families of the bourgeois are still successful to this day. There are specific wines produced in Florence from the first grapes budding on vines to the last corks being sealed over bottles. This includes the Sangiovese, thriving in both the lush countryside as well as the harsher soils to create that almost stony flavor. Traditional wines grown here include the Chianti DOCG, the highest classification of wine produced from Sangiovese grapes in the mountains surrounding Florence.
With the best Tuscan wine being made a little over an hour away in the vineyards of Chianti, wine is an important part of every course of the Italian meal. Wine has always had this social context in Italy. Even now, wine tours make sure to include that camaraderie that has taken place for centuries with a bottles in hand. Kate Fahey, an Arizona native, said her favorite part of her wine tour was “meeting the people that you are randomly sitting by. When making conversation, it’s crazy the connections you’ll make.”
The Wine Windows
In the 1500s, buchettes del vino, meaning “little wine holes” in Italian, sold wine during the Renaissance period through these holes in the wall of buildings that were only a foot in length. Taking working from home to a whole new level, wine could be passed from a servant’s hand in the cellar to a thirsty passerby on the street outside, either in a fresh glass or filling up a flask that the customer had provided.
Wealthy merchants in Florence owned areas of land back in the countryside and were struggling with their endeavors in the banking industry, so they turned to producing alcohol. This allowed them to sell alcohol discreetly through the wall of their homes and avoid paying taxes. Wine was priced cheaper than the taverns and pubs set and could be taken to go.
These came back into usage during the pandemic because it limited physical contact between customers and sellers, where desserts, drinks and dinner could be served safely in a method that has already been around for four centuries. In 1634, the buchettes del vino were also used to sell wine during the Italian Plague, another widespread pandemic at the time.
Two self-proclaimed lovers of wine are friends Kate Fahey and Mercedes Olsen, who are visiting Florence together. Olsen is enjoying her summer break from medical school in Arizona, while Fahey is vacationing from her work back in Chicago. “Wine is a huge, influential part of Italy,” Fahey confirmed. Experiencing Italy through this lens of the importance of alcohol in Italy can really impact how one thinks about the country. Olsen said, “It changed the way I thought of wine in Italy because, going through a wine tour today especially, they go into how everything is made and the economic aspect of it. During Prohibition, this is how a lot of people made money by selling wine through wine windows.”
Rediscovering this Florentine Tradition
Over 150 wine windows are in Florence alone: hundreds more filled the city centuries ago when this fusion of architectural and drinking genius originated in Florence. In the present, some have only remained in the public eye because of a quick mention on a passing walking tour. The many that are no longer operational have been turned into mailboxes or simply blocked off by grates or cement. To keep the tradition around, a cultural organization of the same Italian name as these wine windows was created in 2015.
This traction online attracted the attention of many tourists, including Kate Fahey. “Honestly, we saw it on social media and went on a wine tour today where they mentioned it,” Fahey said. “It sounded like a cool spot to go! It didn’t seem like something we could do anywhere else.” Mercedes Olsen agreed. “We’ve never been to Europe before, so this looked like a great little experience."
Babae, a restaurant on the bank of the Arno River, was one of the first to begin using the wine holes again since ancient times. Furthermore, during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, Vivoli repurposed its buchette del vino into a buchette del gelato. Nowadays, it is no longer in use, but one can see in the ice cream parlor how the window worked in the past.
The Experience
Every wine window is unique: they are decorated differently and can be either carved into the stone façade or the wooden front door of a home, complete with a bell or knocker to signal the person inside of a customer’s presence. The arches contain one-of-a-kind patterns above the hole used for serving guests.
One that remains in use in the evening is Fishmood's Ristorante Pietrabianca, ironically located in the wall of a building utilized as a collegiate study center for the American Institute of Foreign Study. Pietrabianca was founded by an Apulian family that left the port and brought their knowledge to Florence long ago. While he was still a student, Leonardo da Vinci used this same buchette del vino to buy wine for Master Verrocchio hundreds of years ago.
Words that Mercedes Olsen and Kate Fahey used to describe Pietrabianca’s wine window included “adorable, “delightful,” and “a little spot of happiness.” “We weren’t expecting to stumble across this of all places tonight, and we did!” Fahey said.
Ten wine windows are fully operational daily in Florence, and their addresses are listed on the Buchette del Vino Associazione Culturale website. Be transported back to the Renaissance through this unique way of obtaining an alcoholic beverage! As Mercedes Olsen put it, “Who doesn’t want a wine window?”
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