I have been terribly excited about this wine since I first learned that (part of) it was still in cement waiting to be bottled in September 2013. I consider the rare white Castillo Ygay one of the greatest white wines ever produced in Spain, and the 1986 Castillo Ygay Blanco Gran Reserva Especial is a great addition to the portfolio of the winery--an historic wine that is coming back to life. I did a vertical tasting of many of the old, historic vintages of this wine, and they are included in a separate article in this very same issue. This 1986 had seen the light as a limited early release bottled in 1992 and sold around 1995, and some bottles might still be found in the market. But most of it remained unbottled and was kept at the winery, where it stayed in oak for 21 years, followed by some six years in cement vats until it was bottled. It has 13.5% alcohol, an extremely low pH of 2.98 and 6.75 grams of acidity (tartaric). It has a very subtle nose and it's a bit shy, a little closed at first. It was only bottled one and a half years ago, and it's not crazy to say that the wine is showing extremely young. The wine shows more open the day after, when it has developed some nuances of mushrooms and verbena tea. This is mostly Viura with perhaps a pinch of Malvasía Riojana (aka Alarije). The palate is both powerful and elegant, with superb acidity and great length, with volume and sharpness, with a mineral, umami-driven finish. It fills your mouth, tickles your taste buds and makes you salivate. There is nothing negative about the wine; there is no excess oak, nothing blurry, nothing to improve... perhaps the bottle used! I think this is a perfect wine. It seems to be getting younger and younger with time in the glass; it seems to be getting more focused and sharper, and I have no doubt the wine will evolve and last for a very, very, very long time in bottle. I kept the opened bottle for almost one week and the wine didn't move one inch--no oxidation or any signs of fatigue. Having tasted many other vintages, including the also perfect 1919 (which is still going strong at age 97), I have no doubt we're talking about a white for the next 50 years. Looking at the older vintages, I might even be underestimating its life span. The potential next release could be the 1998 in no less than ten years' time. Yes, I'm afraid, the price quoted here seems to be correct (but not adequate), but this otherworldly white 1986 has been priced in the stratosphere. Unfortunately, the speculative price tag makes me very angry, but price does not affect the score. The wine is simply stunning. The only issue here is the price tag, to which I can only say that when I went to taste the wine, I also took the opportunity to cancel an order I had previously put in for one case of this wine. At this price, I won't be buying. What a shame.

I found the 1962 Castillo Ygay Blanco Gran Reserva Especial in a perfect moment for drinking. The records talk about a wine that was mostly Viura with some 6% Malvasía Riojana that fermented in ancient 18,000-liter oak vats, where the wine was kept to settle for some eight months. It then spent the following three years in newish American old barrels to be transferred to older, tartrate-covered ones where it matured for 16 years. It was bottled in June 1982 and released in 1983. It has the developed notes of the older wines and it keeps the notes from its youth, bittersweet echoes. There is some austerity on the palate with pungent flavors and acidity. It has the telltale aromas of an aged white Ygay: waxed old furniture, incense, white chocolate, pepper, brioche, marmalade, herbal tea and mushrooms. This has now rendered all its baby fat and shows fully developed, long and sharp rather than round. This is less glycerin-rich, sharper, with more marked acidity. This has the potential to achieve the complexity of the 1932 and 1919. Old documentation from the winery recommend it as a good match for a slice of foie gras, to which I can only agree. The statistics show that the bottle tasted was 12.96% alcohol with a pH of 2.96, with 7.73 grams of acidity (measured in tartaric acid), 0.92 grams of volatile acidity and 172 milligrams of sulfur.

The 1950 Castillo Ygay Blanco Gran Reserva Especial is the one wine that is clearly different from the rest—though not in the analysis, which showed consistent with the rest, as it had 12.75% alcohol, a pH of 2.96, with 7.73 grams of tartaric acid, 0.92 grams of volatile acidity and 172 milligrams of sulfur dioxide. But the nose was very different (something analysis can never show), with aromas that made me think of a wine with botrytis and some herbal hints of cypress. It's very different just opened and poured, but with time and air, it starts moving toward the common profile of bitter orange marmalade of the other vintages. But it remains a different vintage nonetheless. This vintage was bottled almost 20 years after the harvest, in May 1970, after ageing for eight months in wooden tanks, 3.5 years in fairly new wood and a further 15.33 years in traditional old, tartrate-encrusted American barrels; it was then kept in bottle until it was finally released in 1981.

1946 is a vintage I know fairly well, as I've been lucky enough to drink it on a dozen occasions. I can tell you that the bottle of the 1946 Castillo Ygay Blanco Gran Reserva Especial was not the best I've had. The vintage is really unheard of in Rioja (I don't know any other wine from that year) and curiously enough, the winery seems to have quite a lot of data about this wine: it's said to have been a blend of 91% Viura, 7% Malvasía Riojana and 2% Garnacha Blanca. This is the only vintage I know where they mention Garnacha, but you know how varietal percentages are not always accurate, and even less so with such an old wine. It fermented in old 18,000-liter oak vats where it was kept for 15 months, and then slowly matured for 222 months (that's 18.5 years!) in well-seasoned, neutral American oak barrels averaging 25 years old. It was bottled in March 1967 and released in 1973. A superb bottle I drank pushed me to write a 1,300+ word essay on a single bottle of wine in 2009, so the wine can be truly inspiring. This bottle was a little more advanced than the others tasted with this (as well as previous ones from this same vintage). It was the only wine that didn't come from the winery's library; it was purchased from a private collector. It had notes of iron and earth that made me think of a slow oxidation, perhaps in a slightly warmer cellar. You know with old wines there are no great vintages, there are great bottles. And unfortunately this was not one. The analysis of the bottle tasted showed 12.67% alcohol, 2.94 pH, 7.19 grams of tartaric acid per liter, 0.85 grams of volatile acidity and 120 milligrams of sulfur.

There were two wines that showed above the others in this tasting. The nose of the 1932 Castillo Ygay Blanco Gran Reserva Especial didn't stop changing over the good course of four hours that the tasting lasted. Initially it had a different vegetal twist with hints of artichokes and asparagus that I've found in many vintages of old whites from López de Heredia, and with time it moved towards the more common aromas found in other vintages. We have to realize this was produced in a very different world, where there was no rush, no calculations of return on investment and stuff like that. Under those circumstances, the wine was not released until after 1961, and while the winery has no records of the production process or bottling time, later vintages were still kept in oak for 20 years before they were bottled, so you have to suspect it was that or even more in this case. If the nose is superb, the palate is cosmic: it has a combination of depth and complexity that is hard to achieve. The very subtle evolution mixes the caramel aromas with hints of tea, chamomile and even aromatic herbs, balsamic and nutty. I could keep writing different descriptors for hours, which shows the huge complexity. Unfortunately, this is one of those "once in a lifetime" wines; I had never seen a bottle before this and I very much doubt I'll see another one again. But it was very nice while it lasted. The bottle I tasted had been recorked by the winery in 1987. This is fully mature now, but who knows how much longer it can last... The remaining drops from the bottle were analyzed and revealed a wine that was 12.34% alcohol with a very low pH of 2.93, with 6.90 grams of tartaric acidity, 0.9 grams of volatile acidity and 95 milligrams of sulfur.