1925 Castillo Ygay

1925 was a very good year in Rioja, and there are some famous wines from that vintage, like the Marqués de Riscal or the 1925 Castillo Ygay Reserva Especial, one of the best known of the really old vintages of Ygay, as it has been available for quite some time. It was a very good year at Ygay too, where the records show 401 liters of rain. This was released much later than the wines from the 1910s, as it was bottled in April 1964 and released in 1973; it spent eight months in tank, 60 months in semi-new barrels and 393 months in well-seasoned, neutral American oak barrels whose insides were covered in tartrates. We have varietal data here: 49% Tempranillo, 19% Garnacha, 17% Mazuelo and 15% Graciano, and the alcohol was 13% with 7.4 grams of tartaric acid per liter and 0.78 grams of volatile acidity with a pH of 2.96. The white from 1925 (which I've drunk once, and it was a thrill) was released in 1954. This is again a more powerful vintage, earthy and darker, more in the style of the 1917, concentrated, with a little honey. It has a round and polished palate with fully resolved tannins, more velvet than satin. It developed amazing notes of chicken broth, morel mushrooms and truffles. There were only two bottles of the 1925 at the winery despite the fact that is still possible to find it in the market. The bottled I tasted was recorked, and it was a bottle that was kept as a record for an export to the US.