The concept of a pickup serve window was born in Florence, Italy in the 16th century long before it became ubiquitous in our North American culture. These little windows stand one foot tall and are predominately located at eye level next to the main front door of large palacios of wealthy landowners in this era - and were often directly connected to their wine cellars - which allowed them to sell their surplus wine to the working class. These windows are called buchette del vino – wine windows – in Italian.
In 1559, the Grand Duke of Tuscany Cosimo I de’ Medici decreed that people could sell wine directly out of their homes. This enabled the wealthy wine-producing landowners such as the Antinori, Frescobaldi, Ricasoli families, and many more to sell their surplus wine and conveniently evade the tax collector by skipping the middleman.
How did this work? People would knock on the little wood or metal door. A cantiniere – a well-respected wine-trained servant, would answer the knock. The buyer would pass their fiasco – this is the classic Chianti rounded wine bottle that has its bottom enclosed with a straw basket – and place the payment on a metal tray. The cantinere would fill the fiasco bottle and hand it back.
When the Bubonic plague blanketed the city of Florence once more between 1630 and 1633 these buchette del vino played a vital role. People understood the need to minimize the face-to-face and hand-to-hand commerce to help curb the spread of the plague. These wine windows were extensively used and all the coins for payment were disinfected with vinegar on the receiving metal plate before been touched by the cantinere.
There is no one reason why these wine windows were no longer used. They slowly faded into obscurity in the early 19th century. Many of them were destroyed during the bombing in World War II and many of the wooden ones were permanently lost to the most destructive flood-waters to deluge the city of Florence in 1966.
Enterprising Florentine business owners today are now taking inspiration from this historical architectural element and reviving the centuries-old tradition of contactless wine windows in the city to serve their customers in a socially distant manner. According to the Wine Windows Association, there are approximately 180 wine windows in the metropolitan city of Florence, 150 of these can be found in the historical center of the city.
Here are but a few avant-garde purveyors using these buchette del vino to service their customers today in this COVID 19 era. Babae (@babaefirenze), brought back the tradition with their L’ora della Buchetta – The Window Hour. You can order the icon Italian apertivo drink, the Aperol Spritz from Osteria delle Brache (@osteriadellebrache_firenze), or a gelato from the Vivoli Gelateria. (@vivoli_il_gelato)
First and foremost, I am a #winelover and I want to try to make my love for #wine contagious. At @cc1SipAtaTime, I want you to experience a love of wine in an easy-going manner with no Uber geeky stuff involved!
This a non-sponsored article.