L'Italo-Americano

www.italoamericano.org 8 THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019 L'Italo-Americano NEWS & FEATURES TOP STORIES PEOPLE EVENTS F lorence's streets are filled with secrets and curios ities : s ome of them are know n to those into history and local legends , oth ers are s o obscure only locals can tell you about them. This is not so unusu- al, when you think of it, all old cities are filled with history and, with it, always comes a deluge of old tales and interesting tradi- tions. The city of Dante Alighieri has recently revived one of them, that of the buchette del vino, or wine windows. If you read us regularly, you may remember an interesting article about them on our very own pages, back in 2017. At the time, buchette were just a curious memento of Renaissance Flo- rence, a nice reminder of what life used to be all those centuries ago, in a time when Tuscany was the cultural heart of the whole w orld. Today, thes e ubiqui- tous "holes in the wall" are oper- ative again. Very good, you may say, but what are they exactly? Here's a little his tory, for thos e w ho've never heard of read about them before. The buchette del vino are peculiar openings, usually around one foot tall, that Renaissance Florentine nobility built into the façades of their palaces . M os t of them w ere boarded up after they fell into disuse, but about 100 are still there, ready to be spot- ted by an attentive eye. Local his torians tell us they first became popular sometimes in the 16th century, when the aris tocrats of F lorence began investing in wine making and s elling. A lw ays eager to make some more bucks, they excogitated an ingenious system to avoid paying taxes: selling the w ine directly from their own residences, through what may res emble an ante litteram "drive through" for liquors. Buchette connected the street to buildings' cellars, where a cantiniere, a server who had the s pecific duty to attend the buchetta, w as ready to fill orders. If you wanted a bottle of wine, all you needed to do was knock on the buchetta's window, leave money and an empty bot- tle in it, and wait for it to be returned to you full. Simple, quick and, most importantly, tax free for wine makers. Buchette became very fash- ionable, to the point all wine making aristocrats would have one on the street facing wall of their palatial homes. They were s o famous their us e spread around Tuscany, especial- ly in places like Pisa and Siena. Our curious wine delivering windows served the people of Florence for about three cen- turies, until the rise in popularity of more convivial w ays to drink, taverne and osterie, marked their fall into oblivion. That, until 2015 when the A s s ociazione Culturale Buchette del Vino was created to recover and protect this unique feature of Florentine heritage. A while back Matteo Faglia, one of the Associazione's founders told to Wine Spectator, a popular online magazine about wine and w ine making, that "thes e small architectural features are a very special commercial and social phenomenon unique to Florence and Tuscany," as we mentioned already above. M ore importantly, though, Faglia also says that in spite of being "a minor cultural patri- mony, they are an integral part of the richest area of the world in terms of works of art and monu- ments: Tuscany." This is why the Associazione took upon itself the duty to find, catalogue and pre- serve all the buchette still exist- ing around the region. The Summer just about to end has brought a welcome present to the people of the Associazione Culturale delle Buchette del Vino, because Babae, a restau- rant in the heart of Florence's his torical centre, decided to make its own buchetta opera- tive again. Throughout the hot s eas on, the people at Babae — its name is a bit of a cultural gem, too: it is the Latin equivalent of our modern "wow!" — served glasses of refreshing red or white to customers through their own buchetta. And it was a success. In an interview to local Flo- rence magazine Lungarno, Bran- do Gozzini, of the restaurant's ow ners , explains how they decided to reopen the buchetta: "when we got the restaurant, we immediately noticed there was a buchetta. We wanted to do some- thing with it and we thought to open it for aperitivo, between 19 and 20." Babae's initiative has certain- ly brought a lot of attention on the Associazione Culturale delle Buchette del Vino, as Faglia highlights: "although the ways of s ellin g w ine have obvious ly changed s ince the w ine w indow s w ere fully active," he explains to Wine Spectator, "this small gesture, which highlights a nice of Flo- rentine history, is very welcome, because it helps to keep alive this antique and unique way of sell- ing one of Tus cany's most important agricultural and commercial products: its wine." The opening of an ancient buchetta may s eem an almost negligible gesture, when considered in the wider panora- ma of what needs to be done, in Florence as anywhere else in Italy, to keep alive and to pre- serve ancient traditions part of the country's rich and important heritage. But in truth, it is indica- tion of something important. It shows the interest towards the past and its history, towards its meaning and towards the central- ity of its pres ervation is clear also to younger genera- tions, those represented by the imaginative, resourceful owners of Babae. It is also demonstra- tion that the work of us common men and women with a penchant for local history and heritage protection, just like the people at the Associazione Culturale dell Buchette del Vino, can bring the right attention to something that would otherwise be forgotten and neglected. A buchetta del vino in Florence: there are more than 100 in the city (Ⓒ: Dreamstime) CHIARA D'ALESSIO A Renaissance tradition becomes popular again: Florence and its buchette del vino

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