Chianti Wine Parade

Saturday September 29th

Here are some pictures I took of the parade.



Catherine and I found out about this parade that occurs here in Florence where Chianti (a major wine manufacturer in the Tuscany region) brings an ox drawn cart of wine into the city as a gift. I don’t remember the details about the parade and honestly it was a while ago so I am a little fuzzy on the details.

Catherine and I started walking towards the ending point, a piazza by the Uffizi gallery, and we got caught in part of the parade right outside Duomo. We stopped among the masses of people to take some pictures before fighting our way to the end point. Because there were so many people I knew that Catherine and I were probably going to get spit up so once we got to the piazza at the end of the parade, we agreed to meet at the large fountain in the square at the end of the parade.

I was able to get some decent pictures but decided that I was much more comfortable on the outside of the crowds rather than directly in them…you will notice (with my pictures of the fountain) that I couldn’t see much so I got a little distracted.

They had a big presentation where the Chianti manufacturer gave someone important a bottle as a gift. This whole thing was in Italian so I didn’t really understand what was going on. I just knew it was a big deal. One thing that was kind of neat was that all of the people in the parade were dressed in traditional renaissance clothing, the women in large medieval gowns and the men in funny looking outfits with tights. They had a drum line, trumpets, and flags…the flag bearers were really good, throwing the flags back and forth while continuing to move forward. This sounds simple but with all of the people in the middle of the road it was pretty skillful.