Marsala isn’t having a comeback. The fortified Sicilian wine hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s probably sitting in your pantry, where you left it, if you even left it there at all. You may be aware that it’s a wine, or not. You might just as easily have taken it for a sauce, because of the dish chicken Marsala, or a person for whom that sauce was named. In January, the California-based cookbook author Nik Sharma, who is from India, tweeted about a frequent and frustrating mix-up: “Masala and Marsala are not one and the same.” This would suggest that some people have confused Marsala for an Indian spice blend.

To make matters worse, the stuff sold in American supermarkets as Marsala often isn’t Marsala at all. Labeled “cooking wine,” it has come to eclipse the real thing, even though the list of ingredients on the bottle may include corn syrup, which you’d expect to find in a can of soda, not in a wine sold at a wine shop.