Wine Windows of Italy Make a COVID-19 Comeback

While the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020 lacks the staggering death toll of the Black Death of 1347—killing approximately sixty percent of the Italian population—the plagues of the 14th and 17th centuries prompted wine merchants in Tuscany to install wine windows to protect buyers and sellers from coming into close contact with one another.

“The socially distant precaution was ahead of its time,” says Mary Forrest, one of the founding members of the Associazione Buchette del Vino or Wine Windows Association, which was established six years ago to document and preserve the nearly 300 wine windows in greater Tuscany.

“It’s kind of amazing,” Mary goes on “because people didn’t know about germs in those days.” With more than 150 wine windows in Florence alone, the small pass-throughs fell out of fashion after the second plague pandemic of 1671, until the coronavirus outbreak inspired their comeback.

While many wine windows were installed in palaces for aristocrats to sell their excess wine, many still remain functional, opened for the first time in centuries to sell everything from wine, cocktails, gelato and coffee.