Wouldn’t it be great if via Twitter we could send and receive information about Italy on just what we want? Well, we could, if we all agree on which hashtags to use.

Even if you do not use Twitter directly, you may well have come across Twitter results for Italy while searching for something to do with Italy on some search engine or other.

Twitter is about as up to the minute as you can get on the world wide web.  It’s a veritable waterfall of instantaneous information, which at times becomes more like a geyser, especially when the twitter-sphere is set alight by some event or other such as the elections in Iran.

Handling all that information can be daunting, to say the least.  However little things called hashtags (#Italy = a hashtag) can help those watching the Twitter waterfall grab something discernible from the midst of the mighty flow.  Hashtags can also help you go back through a week of Twitter tweets to find just what you want.

Alas though, spammers and naughty companies such as Britain’s Habitat, have been abusing hashtags.  A shame, because they can be mighty useful.

Here’s the scenario: I have something you want, but you cannot find it.  Neither of us knows much about keywords or something called SEO – which is the case for a lot of web users and small businesses.

Someone, that’s you and I, creates a list of common terms which can help customers find what they want.  Customers look for what they want using these standard terms – terms which sellers have created just for this purpose.

Here is an example:

A Hashtag Example

Just imagine someone is thinking about a holiday in Tuscany in a villa with a pool. and would like a wine tour too. Villa owners and wine tour operators in Tuscany all use the following hashtags:

• #tuscany_villap – ‘tuscany’ – where – ‘_villap’ – villa with a pool.

• #tuscany_winetour ‘tuscany’ – where – ‘_winetour’ – what.

Our customer knows she has to monitor the following hashtags via TweetDeck or HootSuite: #tuscany_villap, plus #tuscany_winetour.  Whenever someone uses these hashtags in a tweet, our follower sees exactly the information she wants, or can find it at a later date, perhaps at the weekend when she has more time.  Links then lead to further information, and sales.

It’s a form of super-targeting, if you like.  Or in simple terms, giving customers what they want.  But it can only work if everyone uses the same terms – not tuscany_house, or tuscan_tour, or even tuscany_winestours.

The Hashtag Hope

The hope is that this post will lead to the creation of a definitive list of hashtags for everything and anything to do with Italy.

Let’s call it an attempt at standardisation, as well as being a point of reference for those with information, and those looking for information within Twitter.  Those with information are sellers, and those looking, customers.

Seeing as this is a blog and it can be updated easily, special Italy hashtags can be added, modified or taken away from the list below.

Of course, the creation of this list can only work if everyone chips in, and, above all, starts using a common system.  So you will need to spread the word.

Italy Hashtag Objectives

This is a fledgling list which will grow and evolve over time.

There are two objectives, which also double as good reasons for using the things:

1. To create standard hashtags to help people receive and find the exact information on what they want or need, quickly and easily.

2. To use hashtags to help businesses, information sources, and search engines to point everybody in the right direction, and thus sell more.

I know of a number of businesses in Italy which operate in the tourism sector, and are using Twitter.  Ashley Bartner of La Tavola Marche, is but one.  La Tavola Marche’s Twitter feed is here: La Tavola Marche on Twitter

This post may help people like Ashley exploit the full potential of their businesses and in so doing, keep them in business, and, with a little luck, help them expand too.

Here goes with the first version of:

The Great List of Italy Hashtags

If you want to suggest new hashtags to add to the list, either as a user or business owner, then leave a comment, or use the contact system above.

Note: Hashtags may be either upper or lower case.

First, a list of Italian regions

Note how #Tuscany already has its very own hashtag.

Note: Where the names are long, I’ve written suggestions for a possible #hashtag

North

#Aosta Valley – suggestion #Aosta

#Friuli-Venezia Giulia – suggestion #Friuli

#Liguria #riviera

#Lombardy

#Piedmont (is not just in Italy!)

#Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol – suggestion #Trentino

#Veneto (can be confused with #Venice – but is not the same.)

Central

#Abruzzo

#Lazio

#Marche

#Emilia-Romagna

#Tuscany

#Umbria #Perugia

South

#Apulia

#Basilicata

#Calabria

#Campania

#Molise

Islands

#Sardinia

#Sicily

Italian Cities

#Florence

#Rome

#Venice

#Perugia - See Umbria

#Turin

#Naples

#Positano

#Bari

Hashtags which represent something for which is region is well known, such as chianti, can also be created, or appended.

Existing Italy hashtags:

#Berlusconi

#chianti

Hashtags in bold are already in usage – I have not checked them all.

Travel Information Detail

These could also be appended to hashtags like #venice, for example: #venice_offer_wk.

In this way, users can receive information on special offers for weekends in Venice.

This system also saves space, in that it is 16 characters, whereas #venice #offer #wk, is 18 characters.  Not a huge saving, but with only 140 characters to play with on Twitter, saving a couple of characters may be a big help.

A thought: Maybe a’+’ would be better than the ‘_’ underscore.  On my keyboard, I simply press ‘+’, whereas I need to press shift to get the ‘_’ underscore.  Maybe the underscore should not be used at all.  Sometimes I think it is useful, other times, not so much, for example: #italianwine is easy to read, and self-explanatory too.

_offer

_discount

_travel

_ski

_sea – seaside location _seanf – sea not far

_country

_hotel

_hostel

_hotel5 – 5 star hotel

_villap – villa with pool

_villa – independent house

_apt – apartment

_bb – bed and breakfast

_eat – information about where to eat.

_cooking – information on cookery courses.

_cook or _chef – information on cooks or chefs for hire.

_photo – information on photography courses.

_get – ‘how to find us’ and ‘how to get there’ type information. _map could also be used.

_art – exhibitions

Note that #offer could still be used, but that it refers to any and every offer, from shoes to shellfish.  The same goes for #travel and #tourism – they are general.

Terms Which Could Become Hashtags

Here are some more potential hashtags which have come from the popular tags on the Official Tourism Site of Tuscany:

paintings
architecture
villages
parks
medici
churches
hiking
wines
romans
museums
reserves
villas
nature
trekking
medieval
archeology
itineraries
etruscans
castles
renaissance

Some; those in bold; are already used as hashtags.

Twitter Can Help Market Italy

I know that Italy is not great at marketing itself, especially to those outside Italy.  Help for businesses in Italy’s tourist sector is scant.  However systems like Twitter, which are now integrated into search engines, and are likely to be even more so in the future, can help market services and products related to Italy.

While this post is aimed more at the tourism sector, just about any product or service to do with Italy could benefit.

Raymond Lamothe, a Tuscany resident, entrepreneur, and pig expert, recently created the hashtag: #cintasenese -which means anyone interested in the Cinta Senese Breed of pigs can keep themselves up to date on these Tuscan pigs which, I understand, often become Tuscan treats.  It was a Facebook based conversation with Raymond which helped inspire this post.

Over to you.

Any and all input and feedback is welcomed.

This post has been tweeted, and will be tweeted again when updates become available.

You can follow BlogfromItaly on Twitter using @newsfromitaly.

@BlogfromItaly also exists – but it is for site related news and announcements.

@Alex_P_Roe is my own Twitter feed where I sometimes express opinions on life, the universe and everything.

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The village of Pallerone is where we shop on most days. We could walk there if we wanted to squeeze ourselves between the guardrails and the road, a slice of safety about 20 cm wide, but declined due to, well, imposing girth I suppose.

We looked for an overland route, but to no avail.

In any case, Pallerone has a fascinating Nativity Scene, Crib, or what they call in Italy a Presepe Artistico located right in the heart of town, which is to say the small stretch of houses along the main street. The peasants within the presepe scene go about doing their business like good peasants, day and night hacking away at trees, sewing, fishing, and generally banging at things with hammers or sledges. In a corner, away from all the hacking, hammering and swatting, Jesus lays calmly in a manger and as the sun descends the angels fly in to dangle overhead. When they’re done dangling, a star with a flaming tail bravely moves across the sky to settle over little Jesus. All this occurs with a mechanical precision that is both fascinating (engineering-wise) and campy.

Which is to say I liked it a lot.

Along with the presepe comes a little museum which shows how the figures are built and animated. That’s the clickable pic over there to the right. Also on display is the original motor that controlled the 1937 version of the presepe that was built for the “Salone delle Feste” and shown at the Castello Malaspina in Massa. From a newspaper article on display in the museum I learned that:

the current structure was inaugurated on 22nd of December, 1968, in the presence of the Bishop of Apuania and of the leading local authorities. In just 12 days it was visited by over 15,000 people and a special train from Genoa was even hired for the occasion.

Now 15,000 people represents 15 times the local population. So, in other words, it was a big hit.

The presepe is on display in an artificial grotto on the side of the church. You can visit it year around. It condenses a day into 7 1/2 minutes. An even more condensed version of the presepe day is shown in our little video below: 3 minutes and 11 seconds worth. Enjoy and…Merry Christmas.

At one time here in the Lunigiana, butchering was a critical mission. You needed food to get you through the winter without any refrigeration other than the cooling temperatures of the season. You killed your pig and you preserved a good deal of it as prosciutto, salami and other products that fall under the category of salumi.

My neighbor Armando still follows the old tradition. The pig he sacrifices in December yields prize winning salame Toscana most years, and he makes great lardo and Culatello as well (the inner muscle of the ham or prosciutto).

I was able to watch and take pictures this year. Of course, I labored thus after an offer to “help” with the whole deal. The butcher, Giovanni, really didn’t seem to need any help, leaving me to my own devices, which included a still camera and video camera.

It took roughly 2 and a half hours to totally break down the pig into pieces that would sit overnight, including processing the intestines into roughly cleaned sausage casings. The next day, early in the morning, the pig was further broken down, some of the meat being ground for the salame tascana, mortadella, and sausage and stuffed into the cleaned intestines. That took the whole morning. By noon we sat down to a pig feast while the preserved meats were hanging handsomely.

I’ve prepared a slide show of the process used to break down the pig in the field. You might want to take a look if you don’t get physically ill at the sight of an animal being processed for food: Tuscany Pig Butchering

It’s cold and snowy all over Italy at the moment.  Here in Milan it’s freezing, so it must be absolutely gelid up in them there mountains.  To stave off the winter chill, those who are not nuts about winter weather might like to try an interesting little Italian tipple called Nocino.

Nocino, if you did not know, and knowing how good Italy is at telling the outside world about its hidden treasures, it is probable you did not, is a walnut based alcoholic drink which is quite common up here in the north of Italy.

Often this walnut liqueur is served to guests by country people in the Emiglia Romana region of Italy.  Often said country people have created their very own potent versions of this nutty 80 proof  drink.

I had a bottle of Nocino in the house which I finished today (It is cold).  It was Nocino di Moderna, which can be found in my local supermarket – note that I live in Italy.

If you read on you’ll find out a little more about this Italian drink, and an official recipe for making it – but you will need to come to Italy in June to gather an odd number of walnuts in order to fulfil your Nocino dreams.

Looks Like Motor Oil

To be honest Nocino does look like motor oil.  Not sure it would work as motor oil though, but if you poured a couple of pints into your car’s engine, it would probably end up feeling rather happy while swerving and hiccuping its way down the road.  At least until the engine succumbed to the alcohol content and exploded into a myriad of tiny fragments all smelling vaguely of walnut.

Indeed, Nocino is rather on the strong side, so drinking any more than a wee dram and then driving is not recommended.

Come to think of it, you should perhaps pop this fire-water right into the fuel tank…  Sorry, I digress.

You might be wondering just whereabouts in Italy someone came up with the idea of turning nuts into a drink.  If so, then read on for an answer to that age old question:

• Where do the nuts come from?

Rumour had it that Brazil was the place where the nuts came from.  Well, as we all know, rumours are often just that, rumours.  The truth is that the nuts used in Nocino come from the woods around Modena, a small Italian town that also happens to be moderately well known for making loud, fast cars, which are often red, and balsamic vinegar, which is brown like Nocino.

The Nocino I’ve been sampling is made down near Modena by the Distilleria Gavioli Giuseppe & Figli s.r.l. and sold under the Terre D’Italia label here in Italy.  Not sure if it can be found outside of Italy though, but then there are lots of interesting Italian drinks which don’t seem to have ever made it beyond Italy’s boundaries, which was the point of a recent post entitled: Interesting Italian Drinks – If You Can Find Them

What Does Nocino Taste Like?

Unsurprisingly for a nut based drink, the flavour is nutty, and it is quite sweet too.  Nocino tastes of walnut, although it’s not, perhaps, the kind of flavour one might expect from walnuts which have been turned into a drink.   The fact that it is made with green unripe walnuts may have something to do with this.

All the Nocino I’ve tried has had a quite a syrupy consistency and, as one might expect from a nut based drink, it’s colour is a dark oily brown.  It’s aroma is distinctly nutty too, and it has quite a kick with its 40% alcohol by volume or 80 proof.

As Nocino slips down one’s throat, it warms one up.  It does not burn like cheap whisky, and you seem to be able to feel it as it wends its way towards your stomach.  It’s quite an odd sensation.

Do I Like It?

Although it is an odd drink, probably because I think it is a bit strange to make a drink from walnuts, I do like it.

Some may find Nocino a little on the sweet side, though, but then all the liquers I have tasted have always been sweet drinks.

I would definitely recommend trying it.  Nocino may be considered quite an aristocratic tipple too, as it does have a distinct pedigree.

Would you believe that there is an ‘Ordine del Nocino Modernese‘, which roughly translated becomes a slightly nutty sounding ‘The Walnut Liqueur Order of Modena’?  Well, there is. And aficionados, or those who are curious, might like to use this recipe, which I’ve taken from the Walnut Liqueur Order site and put into English, to try and create their very own Modena Walnut liqueur.

Do It Yourself Nocino – Walnut Liqueur:

A Traditional Italian Recipe

You will need:

• A litre of 95° alcohol – which is easy to find in supermarkets here (Note to frequent and not so frequent flyers – Not sure if you could take a bottle of this on as ‘hand luggage’ though – it’s basically an exlosive).

• 700 to 900 grammes of sugar.

• Around 33-35 green walnuts depending on their size – a nutty tradition has it that you must use an odd number of walnuts.  And your nuts must be untreated and from around Modena – so you’ll have to come to Italy to get them, unless you want to cheat and use local nuts.  Local nuts will not give the same results though.

More importantly, and as tradition indicates, the nuts must have been gathered during the feast of St. John the Baptist which is around the 24th June – otherwise your nocino just will not be the same.

You must check the consistency of your nuts with a pin or the nuts may be split in half -alas just what the ‘right nut consistency is’, is not given, although if you stick to tradition and collect your nuts around St. John the Baptist’s feast, they should be OK nuts, presumably.

Extras, if you like:

• In addition to the right, and odd number, of nuts – gathered at the right time, a few cloves and a little cinnamon may be added, however, according to the Walnut Drink Order official recommendations - a little is too much.  Make of this what you will, although the guideline states that the flavour of the nuts must be preserved at all costs.  You have been warned or else you will end up with a taste which will not drive you nuts.

How to Make Nocino

The nuts, once collected, must be cut into 4 pieces and placed in a glass jar (a large pickling jar -with no rubber gaskets), along with the sugar.

After being kept in the sun for 1-2 days and mixed periodically, the alcohol and any flavourings can be added to the walnut and sugar mix (This requirement excludes those in the UK from having a go – they never get 2 hours sun in a row!).

Once the alcohol has been added, the jar needs to be placed in a partially sunny location for 60 days .  The jar should be opened from time to time and the contents stirred.   Not earlier than 60 days (a conspicuously even number), the drink may be filtered and bottled.

For best results the walnut order people recommend using smoked glass bottles.  However, the best quality Nocino needs to be left to mature like a good wine.  Real Nocino nuts or enthusiasts might like to try the next stage in order to take their very own Nocino to the next level.

Create Top Quality Nocino

True connoisseurs should pop the 60 day old liquid into small wooden barrels made of sweet chestnut or oak, and leave it to mature in cool spot – read cellar – for a minimum of 12 months.

If you do manage to lay you hands on some ’small wooden barrels’ then what you will end up with after 12 months may well be rather special.  Then, of course, there will be the terrible ‘chore’ of having to taste you home brewed liqueur every so often to see how it is coming along.  Go on, force yourself!

The Modena Walnut Liqueur Order Website – in Italian.

Now, who was it who said Brazil is the place the nuts come from?  And no prizes for guessing which drink the local Modena Freemasons down at their meetings!

Those who might like to know more about Modena, may find Eric Dregni’s book worth a read.  Click here to read my review of Dregni’s book: Never Trust a Thin Cook

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A bottle of Nux Alpina Nocino Image by Shabbychef on Wikipedia

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After making sausage, mortadella, and salame toscana, we ate chiodo (pork sausage cooked on a terra cotta testa heated in the kitchen fire, spaghetti al sugo di maiale, maiale in umido, salad, cheese, desert, and coffee. Then, the snow came down.

This is the view out my back window.

Armando’s pig is no more. Enrico’s garden is no more.