Because it’s one of my
common pantry items, shortly after I’d moved to Paris, I went to the
supermarket to get Marsala, to stock my larder. Much to my surprise, the
supermarket didn’t have it. So I went to another, then another. Then another.
Then I went to some liquor stores, where I thought for sure it would be on
the shelf, but no one had ever heard of it. They kept trying to sell me Madeira,
which is kind of like comparing Champagne to crémant.
Both can appear to be similar, but are world’s apart – although I like them
both.
I was pretty perplexed
because Marsala is something that is sold in almost any American grocery
store and since we shared a border with our Italian neighbors, I figured it’d
be something easy to find here in France. (Perhaps because of the prevalence
of Chicken Marsala in the U.S., one of those sure-fire dishes that has become
so popular in red-checkered tableclothed Italian-American restaurants, and
with home cooks?)
 Marsala is
made in Sicily, in the city of Marsala. It’s a naturally sweet, fortified
wine with woody, subtle molasses-like flavors, which come from being aged in
oak casks. Interestingly, Marsala is a wine perpetuo (perpetual), meaning that as
wine is taken out of the casks, more is added. So the wine goes through a
natural oxidation process. (You can read more about it here and
here.)
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