Wine Windows In Renaissance Florence Facilitated Direct To Consumer Sales

Direct to consumer (DTC) wine sales in the U.S.—where producers ship bottles directly to households—bypass distributors and retail stores. This requires more sales effort by producers, but can be rewarded by tax advantages.

Wealthy families in the Italian city of Florence used similar DTC tactics during the Renaissance period to reduce their taxes. A brief, well-illustrated and engaging book titled Wine Windows in Florence and Tuscany—by Florentine art historians Diletta Corsini and Lucrezia Giordano [BDV, 2021]—reveals intriguing business tactics.

During much of the era that includes portions of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, including the 16^th and 17^th centuries, only merchants could sell wine in Florence, and these merchants had to be members of the powerful Arte dei Vinattieri guild. This guild also controlled tavern opening hours and sales prices and designated where wine could be sold. However, there was an important exception to the local law: landowners could purchase wine produced by the tenants who occupied their farm land, then sell this directly from their private residences—according to a decree issued by Cosimo I de’Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, in 1559. When this wine destined for households entered through the city gates, it was exempt from being taxed. Powerful and wealthy families such as Machiavelli, as well as others still strong in the wine trade today—Frescobaldi, Antinori and Ricasoli—complied with this law and sold wine from their often palatial homes to city residents.

This juice was sold in flasks of a certain allowable dimensions. Sales transactions took place through small stone portals in residential walls. These small windows, or buchette [singular is buchetta], only allowed flasks of that required size, and no larger, to pass through. These small portals also reduced the risk of burglars entering, and minimized contamination risks when a wave of bubonic plague ripped across Florence between the years 1629 and 1633, killing 12% of the city’s population. Vendors could pour wine into flasks placed on the window ledge, then scoop up payment coins using a copper rod before dropping these coins into vinegar for decontamination. In the same way that the Covid-19 pandemic modified the use of retail store entrance and exit points to minimize human contact, the creation of buchette reduced contact between sellers and buyers during epidemics.

The book by Corsini and Giordano lists 180 wine windows, or buchette, still existing in this pivotal Renaissance city. During the recent Covid-19 pandemic, some of these same portals were used again for the sale of coffee, wine, snacks and meals.

The book includes historical information about these commercial transaction points and provides street addresses where you can find these architectural anomalies. Because street numbering can vary in Florence, you may want to wander city streets and watch out for such openings without clutching a guide book. Some buchette are well preserved with historical plaques; others look forlorn and forgotten.

The book lists seven bucchete along the Borgo degli Albizi street in the city center. Within within minutes of strolling during a recent weekend visit I found one at street address 26. The accompanying plaque reads ‘Buchetta del Vino Wine Window,’ and includes the website for the Buchette del Vino cultural association. This includes general information about these portals for visitors. Corsini and Giordano’s book also includes a map of locations of such windows in other Tuscan cities—such as Siena, Lucca, Pistoia and Prato.

These buchette of historical interest are also windows to the past—reminders that taxation and illness still modify our surrounding commerce and architecture.