Marsala it is not unusual to experience the effect of Sirocco wind, which brings dust and sand from the Sahara. Winters are generally rainy and cooler with temperatures ranging between minimum of (in December 2014) and . Snowfall occurs very rarely, since the temperature has never dropped below freezing, although snow has fallen before, for example in December 2014. In 397 BC the Phoenician colony of Motya on the southwestern coast of Sicily was invaded and destroyed by the Syracusan tyrant Dionysius I. The survivors founded a town on the mainland nearby, the site of modern-day Marsala, which they called by
Rumney wine not a "fortified" wine in the modern sense, rather a "cooked" wine ("vin cuit") to which boiled-down must (grape syrup) was added. Rumney was exported from Methoni in the southern Peloponnese (one English source calls it "Rompney of Modonn") and perhaps also from Patras and other ports. Although modern methods are different, the Mavrodafni of Patras might be regarded as a modern equivalent of medieval Rumney wine. At the same period, Monemvasia, on the eastern coast of the Peloponnese, was the centre for the export of Malmsey wine; Cretan wine was the third of the medieval trio of Greek wines