During one of my guided tours with kids, we strolled through the streets of Florence, discovering hidden treasures and we came across small windows, located on the ground floor of the ancient buildings. They are as tall and wide as a flask, you know those round-bellied oval-shaped bottles, with a long neck, covered in straw with the double function, the first of insulating the wine, from a thermal point of view to preserve it and second to protect the container from shocks. They were called “toscanelli”.
The children were amazed watching them without taking their eyes off those elegant ravines decorated with ashlar frames, like real ‘wine tabernacles’, imagining how wine was sold in the past through these “Wine Windows” in exchange for a few coins. From the Florentine countryside 2000 flasks were stowed in a pyramid shape on carriages pulled by horses or oxen to be sold in Florence. The noble owners of the palaces could sell their wine without any physical contact with the buyers, so as to avoid diseases and without paying any taxes. Since the last census of the “Wine Windows” Association, 167 have been cataloged.
The children were amazed watching them without taking their eyes off those elegant ravines decorated The Florentines have always liked wine very much, they drank it from the morning. During the muggy Florentine summers, flasks of wine were drunk to quench the thirst, since wine was considered much healthier than water, often a carrier of bacteria and sometimes of diseases. As the old proverb goes “Wine makes good blood”, in the Renaissance the properties of wine were esteemed, it helped circulation and digestion.
Wine diluted with a third of water was reserved for pregnant women. What many do not know is that it was used to leave surplus food or a jug of wine in the little hole of the wine windows for the most needy, a form of charity. They remained active until the 1950s. After the first lockdown, some bars and restaurants have brought back to light this ancient Florentine tradition, reusing the use of small holes to pass ice creams, Spritz and, as usual, a glass of Tuscan red wine.
