Say 1982 Bordeaux to someone who cares about wine and watch their face change. In wine, age is value — the cellars, the vintage charts, the auction rooms all rest on it.
Ask a sake brewery what happens if you keep their sake for five years and you get one of two answers, depending which brewery you ask. Most will tell you it will not be at its best. A few will tell you that is roughly when it starts to get interesting.
Both are describing something real, and the difference shows up in the chemistry.
Sotolon is the compound behind vin jaune. It is in flor-aged Sherry, in aged Sauternes, in Madeira and Tokaji. It is also one of the things that builds up in a sake left to age for years — and when researchers compared sake that tasters had flagged as past its best against sake aged deliberately, sotolon in the flagged bottles was mostly below the level at which anyone can detect it.
Sulfur arrives early. The rest takes years.
The full piece is on the site: a thousand tonnes of snow, a tax that ended the practice for a century, and a competition that recently started giving a trophy to sake that has been aged and has visibly not changed.
Kampai!