“Buchette del Vino” – “Vinous Adventures: Two Girls and Florence’s Hidden Gems”

The Oxford dictionary tells us: Vinous – resembling, associated with, or fond of wine.  In case you didn’t figure it out from the title alone, yes, this is a blog about two girls (I decided against “women” because we ran around Florence like “giddy schoolgirls”) searching for “Buchette del Vino”.

Since I made the decision to leave Poland and ultimately Europe at the end of this year, several friends have mentioned traveling across the pond for a holiday.  So when my friend Teri messaged me earlier in the year and asked me to meet her in Paris in autumn, I didn’t have to think twice.  She also added, “Do you think we can go to Italy, too?”  Once you get on the European continent the rest is easy.  I told her to get to Paris and I would plan Italy.  We decided on Florence with a day trip to Rome.  Once we got dates nailed down, the rest was easy.

Teri also mentioned a bucket list item – le buchette del vino or wine windows.  Hence this blog.

Before I get to the fun stuff, a little history.  The Medici family was from the agricultural Mugello region north of Florence. Sadly, there are no descendants of the Medici left today.  The family ended with the death of Anna Maria Luisa.  She died in the Pitti Palace on 18 February 1743, at the age of 76.  She was buried in the Medici Chapels, in the San Lorenzo church, where she still rests.  Okay, so what does the Medici family have to do with our quest for buchette del vino?

Not to get into their rise and fall and rise to power again, or anything like that, just know the Medici Dynasty returned to power in Florence in 1532.  I don’t know if they were good or bad but I do know that sometime in the middle of the 16^th century, Duke Cosimo I de Medici allowed wealthy landowners to sell their own wine directly to customers through the wine windows.  Anxious to take advantage of this opportunity, many noble wine-producing families began fitting their Florentine palazzos with a buchette.  They could sell their own wine to the public through this window/door.  People would knock, and it would be opened by a server who would be handed a vessel.  They would rinse the vessel, fill it with wine, hand it over, and receive money in exchange.  Florence’s nobility, while hungry for profits, weren’t thrilled with the idea of having lower classes or drunken people in their homes, so these wine windows were ideal.  When the bubonic plague hit Florence in 1630, the need for “social/physical distancing” became more important than “class distancing”.

Matteo Faglio, who in 2015 started a foundation for the preservation of these windows, states, “Right after the black plague, in 1634, historian Francesco Rondinella wrote a book in which he recounts the wine windows playing an essential function during those years, namely to allow the contactless sale of wine to prevent contagion.”

Another fascinating fact I discovered since I have returned home is that if you look at a map of Florence (I will link to a map I have created that documents the windows we visited), several buchette del vino are in one of Florence’s former Red Light Districts. Not really knowing much about them, but having fun trying to find them, on day two in Florence, Teri and I stumbled upon a wine window with a large plaque above it (in Italian of course and we didn’t translate at the time).  The window was on Via Delle Belle Donne (the street of Beautiful Women). Teri knocked and we were disappointed that no one answered.  It was either closed at that time or possibly permanently closed.

 

Before I tell you what I discovered about this particular window, let me add that there are over 180 windows in Florence (158 in the historic center) with over 100 in about 30 other localities throughout Tuscany.  These unique architectural features did not exist anywhere else in the world until….drum roll…first, who knew that like the bubonic plague, a global pandemic would make them popular again in Florence, secondly, they would become Instagram famous…good ole social media.  New, fake wine windows are now showing up in places like Buenos Aires, Argentina; Brooklyn, New York; Phuket, Thailand; and Los Angeles, California.

Okay, back to the window with the plaque. On the corner of Via delle Belle Donne and Via della Spada is what was one of the red light district’s most popular buchette del vino with the original marble signage noting the selling time and the period open, “The cellar is open for sale from November first till April from 9 am to 2 pm and from 5 to 8 pm.  From May first till October from 8 am till 3 pm and from 6 to 9 pm.  On holidays open until 3 pm. “  I also learned that business had become so good that it became necessary to stop customers from knocking on the doors at all hours of the day and night.  According to Matteo Faglia, “Only soldiers departing for battle or women who had just given birth had the right to purchase wine after hours. It was considered an important source of food.  ‘Wine makes blood,’ as they used to say.”

Hopefully, you have enjoyed reading a bit about the wine windows of Florence.  Teri and I visited 10 windows which we knew were in service.  However, two were not open when we visited.  The following is our “vinous adventure” to discovering Florence’s hidden gems.  We didn’t follow a set route but searched them out as we strolled the streets of beautiful Florence, Italy. Here is a link to the map I created should anyone want to check them out on a visit to the city.  The windows we visited have a pin in burgundy with a wine glass.

1. Osteria San Fiorenzo – Borgo dei Greci 1R 50122  This was the first wine window we visited.
2. Osteria Belle Donne – Via Belle Donne 16R  50123 
3. Caffe Duomo – Piazza del Duomo 29 50122

4.  La Buchetta Food and Wine – Borgo Santa Croce 11R 50122  I got to visit this wine window from the inside as well as the outside.

5.  Babae – Via Santo Spirito 21R 50125  Featured in In Episode 5 of CNN’s “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy”

6.  Giunti Odeon Library and Cinema – Via Degli Anselmi, Piazza Degli Strozzi 3-5-7 50123

7.  Cantina de Pucci Bar – Via de Pucci 5R 50122  The server loved to make you ring the bell here.

8.  Ristorante Pietrabianca – Piazza dei Peruzzi 5R 50122

 

9.  Il Latini – Via dei Pachetti 6R 50123  Closed when we were there.  It opens at 19:30 (7:30 pm)

 

10. Fiaschetteria Fantappie – Via dei Serragli 47 50124  Closed when we were there.  Opens at 17:00 (5 pm)

 

 

 

There you have it.  Our trail of buchette del vino.  Yes, the wine is a Euro or two or three higher than in some other places, but the experience…priceless.  Soon we were noticing many now defunct wine windows.  Some had been turned into mailboxes or business signage.  Some are just graffiti collectors, but all are fascinating to find.  We even discovered one serving gelato!

“Here’s to the nights we will never remember with the friends we’ll never forget.” Author Unknown

Saluti and a favorite quote from The Age of Adaline: