I went ahead and cooked the pasta, and it tasted fine, so I used it in my dish. It had been stored in a hard plastic jar in a cool place, though.
DramaQueen, "what I call a special sauce" was made by roasting cut-up, seeded and drained beefsteak tomatoes from our own garden, along with olive oil, garlic, onions and seasonings. My husband ran it through a chinoise, adjusted the seasoning, and then we simmered it with a rind of Parmegiana Reggiano. My husband and I spent a couple of hours the night before preparing the tomatoes, then, the next morning, it took them about 3 hours in a 250 oven for them to roast. He probably spent 30 minutes running it through the chinois, and it simmered about an hour after that.
To us, that's a "special sauce".
There are, by the way, lots of things that are still good after three years in a cool dark place.