Many recipes call for wine as an ingredient, but few are named after one specific wine; and most of those that are, involve the richly flavoured Sicilian fortified wine, Marsala.

Many recipes call for wine as an ingredient, but few are named after one specific wine; and most of those that are, involve the richly flavoured Sicilian fortified wine, Marsala. But Marsala suffers from both an image and an identity problem: even when it escapes being misidentified with masala, an Indian blend of spices, as in the ubiquitous Anglo-Indian dish chicken tikka masala, it is more often associated with the kitchen cupboard than the drinks table. But Marsala’s versatility and variety alone – apart from its use in cooking, it comes in a greater variety of forms than almost any other fortified wine and can be drunk as an aperitif, a digestif or a dessert wine – make it deserving of far greater esteem than it commonly enjoys.

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