In most sake breweries, the brewing season is over by May, a month marked by the announcement of the National New Sake Awards, the biggest public prize to which a brewer can aspire. (Those interested can taste some of the prizewinners at the National Sake Fair in Tokyo's Ikebukuro on June 11th.)

Why "new sake"? In contrast to the world of wine, where the charisma (and price tags) of hoary vintages lend a reflected sheen to even the humblest table wine, the orthodox mantra about sake is that it doesn't age, and that younger is better. And why isn't sake generally thought of in terms of age, like wine?

It was not always so, as one of the great sake authorities, Sakaguchi Kinichiro (1897-1994) stressed in his book, "Nihon no Sake" (Iwanami Shoten). Revered by aficionados, this work appeared in 1964, just before the peak of sake production — a time when brewers could sell as much as they could make. At that time, techniques and equipment were being developed to improve efficiency and capacity: Aging the stuff should have been the last thing on anyone's mind.