NOW YOUS CAN'T LEAVE

In the movie (and play), "A Bronx Tale," the members of a particular fraternal organization centered around their ethnicity ran a bar into which a group of members of another fraternal organization, this one centered on their preference for two-wheeled vehicles, attempted to enter.

"It's a private club," they were told. "You have to leave; you have to leave."

"But we want nothing more than to have a drink in your fine establishment, sir. We mean to cause no trouble," came the response.

"Fine," they were told by the semi-philosophical owner. "You are free to have a drink."

Well, not five seconds after getting beer in hand, the bar exploded into pandemonium, with the bikers shaking and shooting their beer and creating every kind of ruckus imaginable. After a minute of this, the head wise guy shuts the door ominously, looks around the suddenly quiet room, and says, "Now ya's can't leave."

Immediately, dozens of club-wielding affiliate members poured out of the back room and exacted justice.

"Now ya's can't leave." The movie, as good as it was, has been relegated to the attics of my mind, save for that one line. "Now ya's can't leave." And so it is with some of my sake.

Backing gingerly back into the realm of sake-talk, we are often told "the rules" of sake care and such, but it is very important to remember that in the world of sake there are countless exceptions to every rule. One of those is the rule of drinking your sake young.

Sure, it is true that sake is meant to be consumed young, and that traditionally and historically it has always been done so (again, with those dang exceptions notwithstanding). But elsewhere in this newsletter, I have written about "the date on the bottle," and what to watch for related to age when buying a sake, and in that article I also pointed out how at least a gazillion things can affect how much a sake will mature, and therefore when to begin to worry about age. In actuality, it is not an easy answer, which is why following the "younger is better, don't mess with aging" philosophy is best - at first. But the ultimate truth is a bit higher than that.

The fact is that well matured sake can be very interesting, if you are into it, if you are open minded about what constitutes good, and if you have a sense of humor (for those inevitable misjudgements).

There are several vaults for sake in my office, some cold, some not. Over the course of time, the nature of my work dictates that many a bottle finds it way to me. Try as I might (and oh, I do try), I cannot drink them all in a timely manner. So I often find myself peering into a three-level storage bin six bottles deep and as many wide, pondering what has to go next. And inevitably, I will find one or two that I feel should be tasted soon or they could potentially begin that long, slow, downhill slide.

But one of the great joys of this process is to find one or two that definitely should have been consumed a couple of months earlier. And if I think they can stand up to it, I look at 'em and say with a forced sinister smile, "OK, now ya's can't leave!" And I deliberately lay them down for months or even years, knowing full well the risk I am taking in doing so. Sometimes I am pleased with the results; other times I just act like I am.

My point is decidedly not to suggest you lay down or age your sake. Not taht anything is wrong with that! If so inclinded, do so! Rather, it is to suggest that there are exceptions to everything we think we know about sake, and that there are no hard and fast rules. So never give up hope, and never accept anything as a given.

And what happens, in time, is that we become so interested in sake's intricacies that even if we wanted to stop studying it, we find that we simply cannot.

This is the point in time when sake itself looks us all in the eye and says, "Now ya's can't leave!"