Sagra dell'Uva di Impruneta: B2B merch for Chianti Classico wineries, wine brotherhoods and harvest sponsors

Merchandising for the Sagra dell'Uva di Impruneta

Dates

Last Sunday of September each year, with three days of festivities (Friday–Sunday, 2026: 25–27 September)

Venue

Historic centre of Impruneta — Piazza Buondelmonti, Piazza dell'Assunta, Via della Repubblica, Terrazza di Piazza Buondelmonti

Organiser

Comune di Impruneta with the collaboration of the Pro Loco Impruneta, the Enoteca del Chianti Classico and the Fondazione Sagra dell'Uva

The Sagra dell'Uva di Impruneta is the grape harvest festival that on the last Sunday of September each year brings to life the Tuscan village of Impruneta, south of Florence, with a three-day programme dedicated to Chianti Classico wine and the wine and food tradition of the Greve and Ema valleys. The event was founded in 1935 to mark the close of the agricultural year and since then has gathered the wineries of the Black Rooster, the wine brotherhoods, the local restaurateurs and the delegations from the comuni of Florentine Chianti across three days that combine the parade of allegorical floats built by the wineries, the traditional grape treading in the piazza, the bench tasting of the year's labels in Piazza Buondelmonti and the calendar of harvest dinners held in the trattorias of the historic centre. It is the moment when the Chianti Classico harvest meets the local audience, the trade operators and the corporate sponsors who accompany the festival with their own merchandising that is consistent with their brand while respecting the traditional frame of the event.

For the wineries, the brotherhoods and the sponsors preparing merchandise around the Sagra dell'Uva, the operational window is concentrated in a long weekend and opens ideally on Friday afternoon with the arrival of the first delegations and the first harvest dinners, continues on Saturday with the tasting bench and the float parade, and closes on Sunday with the treading ceremony in the piazza and the end of the festival. Distribution of material is therefore structured in two moments: Friday–Saturday for representational labels destined for the partner wineries and the institutional delegations, and Saturday–Sunday for the high-volume material destined for the tasting bench and the parade audience. For corporate teams that want to cover the entire weekend we propose a programme split across both moments, with separate lots per recipient and a single delivery window on Friday morning toward a single hub in Impruneta.

Coordinating artwork, lot labels, delivery windows and named contacts is what keeps the kit on the Friday dinner table or in the Saturday tasting bench rather than stranded in a courier warehouse. We run pre-production (physical sample, Pantone colour map inspired by the Chianti Classico Black Rooster, debossing proof on oak wood, on Impruneta ceramic and on Empoli blown glass, screen-print proof on Tuscan-checked cotton), production on Italian supply chains — Empoli glass, Impruneta and Montelupo ceramic, Collodi and Cuneo wood, Capannori paper mills in Tuscany, Scandicci leather, Maniago steel, Como silk — and delivery to an Impruneta hotel, a winery seat or a sponsor residence on a slot the cohort has confirmed. For programmes that mix winery delegations, corporate sponsors, trade press and tourist hospitality, we split into lots labelled per recipient, with separate delivery addresses if a Florence- or Milan-based sponsor wants a share of the kit collected from its own office rather than from the Impruneta hub.

A recurring case for our clients is the harvest dinners in the trattorias of the historic centre: the guest count is finalised only close to the festival and the menus are often customised with traditional Tuscan dishes — ribollita, bistecca alla fiorentina, crostoni with Colonnata lardo, cantucci with Vin Santo. In these jobs we propose a neutral graphic base — coordinated marks applied to placemats, coasters, wooden place cards and small cardboard — and add the hosting winery's details in a second wave at short run, so that each guest finds a coordinated keepsake of the evening. For float-parade participants who want a small personal kit — silk foulard, blown-glass cup, oak-wood object — we replicate the pieces in a separate pack that is delivered directly to the winery seats on Saturday afternoon. Print quality on FSC-certified paper and organic cotton is a frequent request for brand teams, and we handle it with screen-printing and digital-printing partners registered with FSC and GOTS certification circuits.

On the commissioning side, the Sagra dell'Uva di Impruneta is supported by the Comune di Impruneta, the Pro Loco Impruneta, the Enoteca del Chianti Classico and a range of corporate sponsors — local banks, banking foundations, Chianti Classico wineries, producer consortia, Tuscan fashion brands, large-scale retail and wine-distribution groups — who intervene at different contribution levels and who wish to be present at the festival with their own merchandising that is consistent with their image while respecting the winemaking tradition of the event. For teams pairing the Sagra dell'Uva di Impruneta with the Tuscan autumn calendar (Festa del Chianti Classico in Greve in Chianti, Chianti Classico Expo in Florence, Bistecca all'Oliveto in Impruneta) we replicate the logistics across the different weeks and set up a single annual supply contract with revisions per date.

Production and logistics toward Impruneta

Before production begins, lock the artwork, per-recipient quantities, packaging and the named reception point. The exact winery or sponsor headquarter finalises only against the current hospitality list close to the festival — the parade route itself is a public space and cannot be used as a parcel-reception address on the day. Impruneta's ZTL (limited traffic zone) and night traffic restrictions condition courier access, and most teams combine an Impruneta hotel or winery seat with pickup from the venue itself on the day of the festival. For teams running multiple wineries in the same edition we replicate the logistics across two or three nodes, so that each contact finds its own lot within minutes of the workplace rather than travelling across the historic centre during the road closures.

For an event in Impruneta we usually propose a central Impruneta hotel or winery headquarter as the primary delivery point, with optional second-leg delivery to a Florence office if the sponsor prefers to take possession of the kit after the festival. B2B goods stay within Italy under standard CMR with packing list; for clients subject to CSRD (D.Lgs. 125/2024) we attach a Scope 3 CO₂e sheet per GHG Protocol on the Lombardy–Tuscany route, and on request we integrate the sheet with the data of the production districts involved. Cold-store logistics is not required for this event, but we regularly coordinate temperature-controlled deliveries for wine producers joining the harvest dinners with their own tasting tables.

All Italian B2B orders are invoiced in EUR at the standard 22% VAT rate (with reduced 4%, 5% and 10% rates where applicable by product category) and routed through the Agenzia delle Entrate's Sistema di Interscambio (SdI) to the buyer's codice destinatario or PEC address. Corp-Merch.IT is a registered Italian VAT operator, listed on VIES for intra-EU operations, and handles reverse charge, split payment and pubblica-amministrazione self-invoicing under current Italian rules. For corporate clients subject to IFRS reporting we also produce an attachment with the valuation of inventory and equity contributions split between income statement and balance sheet.

Frequently asked questions