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WINES OF ITALY
Orvieto
A delightful white wine from the Trebbiano grape. Not
a fine wine but fresh and pleasant. From the town of
Orvieto, a hilltop city in Central Italy in the province of
Umbria.
Capri
A white wine from the Greco grape is made on the
island of this name and on the mainland nearby. The
white is the more popular type, being dry with a light
golden colour.
Falerno, Lachryma Christl (Tears of Christ)
Similar to Capri wines, being made from the same grape,
but grown around Mt. Vesuvius.
Moscato di Siracusa, Malvasia di Lipari
The best two dessert wines apart from Marsala.
Marsala
This is a dessert wine from the province of Trapani in
Sicily, being a dark amber coloured wine of the sherry type.
Its introductionintoEngland cameaboutby a man named
John Woodhouse, who in 1773 introduced some Trapani
wine which he had fortified with Brandy,in order to rival
Madeira, the popular wine of that time. It was due to
the success of this wine that he eventually stayed in Sicily
to look after his interests there. Other people interested
in Marsala were Benjamin Ingham, who settled in Palermo
in 1805 and became a wine merchant in 1815. Ari Itahan
named Vincio Florio started business in Marsala in 1825.
These three firms are still in business at the present day
and are known as Florio & Co., Ingham Whittaker & Co.
and Woodhouse & Co.
In making Marsala, musts of the Catarratto and Inzoha
varieties of grape are fermented dry. This is then sweet
ened with a dark caramellized grape concentrate made by
boiling grape juice down in open kettles. The sweetened
wine is then fortified to about 17%-24% alcohol.
It is treated in a similar manner to sherry,but is matured
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