Marsala

Marsala is a fortified wine from the area around the port city of Marsala, at the western tip of Sicily, and one of Italy's early protected wines. Made mainly from the white grapes Grillo, Catarratto and Inzolia (and red grapes for the rubino style), it is fortified with grape spirit and graded by colour (oro/gold, ambra/amber, rubino/ruby), by sweetness (secco, semisecco and dolce) and by age (from one-year Fine up to ten-year Vergine Stravecchio). Once a fashionable rival to sherry and Madeira, it is known today both as a cooking wine — the heart of chicken Marsala, veal scaloppine and zabaglione — and, in its long-aged Vergine bottlings, as a serious dry wine to sip on its own.