27/10/2020
Didyou know the wine windows? They're all over the tuscany. In Florence in the historical center there are 145, but who knows in the 1500s how many there were 🤔
Today they are all, or almost (then I'll explain), closed.
The wine makers had them built on the side of their houses doors, or at least near them, to sell the wine, sometimes the unsold one, to the wanderers and passers-by for a few coins. But how did the sale work? Cause today as you know we go to a winery, in Chianti (Chianti classico wine), or in val d'Orcia (Brunello wine), or to Rufina (Chianti Rufina) and we get explained the aging, the conservation, the color, the aftertaste, you look at the year, the shape of the soil, the type of barrel in which it has been aged, how many years, or months, various accompaniments, and so on cause I'm finishing the characters (for the most refined) , then someone goes to the supermarket and looks at the price.
In the 1500s, however, the aforementioned wanderer took the fiasco from home and had it filled, without much pretensions.
According to some historians, however, these windows started a real parallel market. Leftover meals were also sold trough them and in some it was also possible to make offers to be distributed later to the poors.
As I said, almost all of them are closed. There are those who have walled them leaving just the shape on the wall, those who have used them to put the door bell in it and those who have put the post box. But there are those who still use them 😉