Mention Marsala and the first thing people think of is a sweet-ish wine for cooking. That is understandable given that Marsala wines (other than one or two specimens of the cooking variety) have been slowly and quietly disappearing off the face of this earth. The cooking wine is the variety most people encounter today.
But good drinking Marsala exists and this is one of them. There was a Peter's Wine Circle dinner last Friday, when we tasted wines from Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica. Having failed to locate a sparkling wine from any of those islands, I thought of using this Marsala as an aperitif. My only problem was that I was unsure if it was dry or sweet. So I opened it and poured myself a very small taster - dry enough for aperitif.
A golden tea colour, the Marsala had a raisined nose with nutty notes. There were hints of raisined sweetness on entry followed by a rich oxidised nutty palate, with some acidity appearing on swallowing following on to the finish. The nutty note persists throughout to the long finish. Of course this is a particularly fine example from Florio, a well known exponent of this genre. Made from 100% Grillo from the 1998 vintage, this wine was aged 8 years in oak barrels. My willingness to explore the unfamiliar has paid off!
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