Whilst discussing the potential for foreign travel as, hopefully, we come towards the end of the current pandemic a friend described how he and his wife had booked a trip to Sicily. I responded with genuine interest, enthusiasm and a little envy. It was when he said 'and then we will take the helicopter back to Plymouth' that I realised either he was a man of much greater means than I had previously understood or that he wasn't going to Sicily.
Recently we took a virtual trip to Sicily, in Week F (2021), and it is a pleasure to return there. In that week I mentioned Marsala, so it feels fitting that here we have:
As with the wine from our recent trip this week's wine is made from a blend of grapes. The grapes in question are a majority of Grillo, which on its own makes fresh appley-lemon wines with a nutty tang, and Inzolia (aka at least 8 other names) which also has a nutty personality. Given that, why the blend? I dunno, maybe it's cheaper :-).
Probably due to the passage of time there is a pattern emerging in these most recent pages as wines, or grapes, tasted before reappear in a different guise. Inzolia previously appeared in Week I (2015) as a dry wine and I referred to its role in Marsala and so now I'll return the favour as although Marsala can be dry this one certainly is not. It is similar to a sweet Port, being tawny in colour and having a figgy-raisin flavour with some spiced caramel and hazelnut tones, most prominent in the finish. It is a touch sweeter than I would choose, but it's great with sharp cheeses.
There are clues on the label as to the style in the bottle. To be called Superiore Riserva it must have aged for a minimum of four years, and Dolce is (obviously) Sweet. Other classifications can be applied to wines aged much longer, but you can look those up for yourself.
In common with Madeira it has in its history the discovery that the wine improved during long sea journeys. In the case of Madeira this lead to a process where the wine ages in hot warehouses, known as estufagem. For Marsala the process is similar to the solera system used in the production of Sherry, where proportions of new wines are added to older stocks several times over a few years so that the resultant wine is the product of many vintages. In Marsala this process goes under the name 'perpetuum' which is quite descriptive don't you think?
Buy again? Yup, it keeps forever and is great added to fruit dishes, if it hasn't all been drunk first.
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