The Museum of Vine and Wine is housed in the underground cellars of the villa of Poggio Reale, located on top of a hill a few hundred meters from the center of the town. The objects on display are generally those used for the cultivation of vines and for the production and conservation of wine in use during the decades of the first half of the last century.
Worth mentioning are a huge wooden vat for the fermentation of freshly harvested grapes, the various tools used in the vineyard, the many pruning and binding techniques. One wall is completely covered with flasks of wine, from the eighteenth-century mouth-blown wine to the last ones printed in millions of the same specimens all covered with melancholic plastic. The last room is dedicated to trade, shipping and consumption of the precious "nectar" and, in the middle, imposing, stands out the cart, once pulled by a horse parry, on which several hundred flasks were skilfully placed, one on top of the other in a pyramid shape, which had to face the journey of about thirty kilometers that separated Rufina from Florence.
The museum structure is completed by a library that preserves a vast literature on oenological subjects (including a copy of the famous Grand Duke’s announcement of 1716 in which the boundaries of the four areas of Tuscany considered to have a genuine wine vocation were specified) and by a rich wine shop where the most prestigious wines produced locally are housed and preserved (but also drunk).
