Marsala wine Marsala wine Marsala is a wine, dry or sweet, produced in the region surrounding the Italian city of Marsala in Sicily. Marsala first received "Denominazione di Origine Controllata" (DOC) status in 1969. The DOC status is equivalent to PDO: most countries limit the use of the term "Marsala" to those wines that come from the Marsala area, to which the European Union grants Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status. While the city's natives sometimes drink "vintage" Marsala, the wine produced for export is universally fortified similar to Port, Madeira and Sherry. Originally, this addition of alcohol was to ensure that
History of Portuguese wine as to the origin of the fortified wine known as Port, one of the most prevalent is that of the 1678 visit by English wine merchants to a monastery in the Portuguese town of Lamego located along the Douro river. In search of new wines to ship back to England, the merchants came across an abbot in Lamego who was producing a style of wine that the merchants had never encountered before. While fortification of wine had been known for centuries, the fortifying grape spirit was usually added "after" fermentation, when the wine was already fermented dry. The abbot of