A fiasco is a typical Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 style of bottle

Bottle

A bottle is a rigid container with a neck that is narrower than the body and a "mouth". By contrast, a jar has a relatively large mouth or opening. Bottles are often made of glass, clay, plastic, aluminum or other impervious materials, and typically used to store liquids such as water, milk, soft...

, usually with a round body and bottom, partially or completely covered with a close-fitting straw

Straw

Straw is an agricultural by-product, the dry stalks of cereal plants, after the grain and chaff have been removed. Straw makes up about half of the yield of cereal crops such as barley, oats, rice, rye and wheat. It has many uses, including fuel, livestock bedding and fodder, thatching and...

 basket

Basket

A basket is a container which is traditionally constructed from stiff fibres, which can be made from a range of materials, including wood splints, runners, and cane. While most baskets are made from plant materials, other materials such as horsehair, baleen, or metal wire can be used. Baskets are...

.

The basket is typically made of sala, a swamp

Swamp

A swamp is a wetland with some flooding of large areas of land by shallow bodies of water. A swamp generally has a large number of hammocks, or dry-land protrusions, covered by aquatic vegetation, or vegetation that tolerates periodical inundation. The two main types of swamp are "true" or swamp...

 weed

Weed

A weed in a general sense is a plant that is considered by the user of the term to be a nuisance, and normally applied to unwanted plants in human-controlled settings, especially farm fields and gardens, but also lawns, parks, woods, and other areas. More specifically, the term is often used to...

, sun-dried and blanched with sulfur

Sulfur

Sulfur or sulphur is the chemical element with atomic number 16. In the periodic table it is represented by the symbol S. It is an abundant, multivalent non-metal. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with chemical formula S8. Elemental sulfur is a bright yellow...

. The basket provides protection during transportation and handling, and also a flat base for the container. Thus the glass bottle can have a round bottom, which is much simpler to make by glass blowing.

Fiaschi can be efficiently packed for transport, with the necks of upturned bottles safely tucked into the spaces between the baskets of upright ones.

History

Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular...

 mentions the fiasco in the Decameron (around 1350), as a recipient for red wine; and administrative documents of the time mention the profession of fiascaio ("fiasco-maker"). Common fiasco sizes of the time were the quarto ("quarter", 5.7 liters

Litre

pic|200px|right|thumb|One litre is equivalent to this cubeEach side is 10 cm1 litre water = 1 kilogram water The litre is a metric system unit of volume equal to 1 cubic decimetre , to 1,000 cubic centimetres , and to 1/1,000 cubic metre...

), mezzo quarto ("half quarter", 2.28 liters), and metadella ("small half", 1.4 liters).

It is not known, however, when the straw covering was introduced. A 14th century painting

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

 by Tomaso da Modena shows a small rounded flask, completely wrapped with cords of some kind. Other artistic depictions were provided by Botticelli

Sandro Botticelli

Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance...

 (Banchetto per Nastagio degli Onesti) and Ghirlandaio

Domenico Ghirlandaio

Domenico Ghirlandaio was an Italian Renaissance painter from Florence. Among his many apprentices was Michelangelo.-Early years:Ghirlandaio's full name is given as Domenico di Tommaso di Currado di Doffo Bigordi...

 (Buonomini di San Martino and The Birth of John the Baptist). The earliest fragments of sala-covered bottles date from the 15th century.

Throughout its history, the fiasco was found on the tables of peasant

Peasant

A peasant is an agricultural worker who generally tend to be poor and homeless-Etymology:The word is derived from 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, or outlying administrative district.- Position in society :Peasants typically...

s and Pope

Pope

The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church . In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle...

s alike. A decree from 1574 fixed the capacity of the mezzo quarto bottle, and established a public office that would certify the capacity of fiascos by a lead

Lead

Lead is a main-group element in the carbon group with the symbol Pb and atomic number 82. Lead is a soft, malleable poor metal. It is also counted as one of the heavy metals. Metallic lead has a bluish-white color after being freshly cut, but it soon tarnishes to a dull grayish color when exposed...

 seal

Seal (device)

A seal can be a figure impressed in wax, clay, or some other medium, or embossed on paper, with the purpose of authenticating a document ; but the term can also mean the device for making such impressions, being essentially a mould with the mirror image of the design carved in sunken- relief or...

 applied to the straw covering. However, producers soon started re-using the baskets from discarded certified flasks to dress new sub-standard bottles. To avoid this common fraud, another decree from 1618 specified that the seal was to be applied to the glass bottle itself. In 1621, yet another decree mandated sealing the bottle's mouth with molten lead. For this reason, the straw cover had to be reduced, leaving the bottle bare from the "shoulder" up -- an arrangement that persists to this day.

By the early 20th century, the manufacture of fiascos employed about 1000 glass blowers and 30,000 basket weavers. A manufacturer's association (Comissionaria Industria Fiaschi) was established at Empoli

Empoli

Empoli is a town and comune in Tuscany, Italy, about 20 km southwest of Florence, to the south of the Arno in a plain formed by the latter river. The plain has been usable for agriculture since Roman times. The commune's territory becomes a hilly one as it departs from the river...

 in 1933. Starting in the 1950s the manufacture of bottles and baskets was increasingly automated.

At the same time, the Bordeaux

Bordeaux

Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...

-style bottle (bordolese) was becoming more popular among wine producers, displacing the fiasco. However, a 1965 law reserved the fiasco for wines of legally controlled denomination (Denominazione di Origine Controllata

Denominazione di Origine Controllata

Denominazione di origine controllata is a quality assurance label for food products, especially wines and various formaggi . It is modelled after the French AOC...

), restoring the prestige of that classical container.

Basket features

The straw bands can be vertical or horizontal; the former was traditionally used for fiascos destined to local markets, while the latter, with a reinforced base and more careful weaving, was chiefly used for export. The latter often used a basket of whitened straw, decorated with two stripes tinted in the Italian flag colors (red and green).

The base is a doughnut made of scrap straw, tied with fine straw blades (salicchio). Centuries ago, the basket often included one or more handles of twisted straw; they are sometimes included in present-day fiascos, often for decorative purposes only.

External links

• History of the Fiasco at the Empoli
  Empoli
  Empoli is a town and comune in Tuscany, Italy, about 20 km southwest of Florence, to the south of the Arno in a plain formed by the latter river. The plain has been usable for agriculture since Roman times. The commune's territory becomes a hilly one as it departs from the river...
  
  city site