In the movie “Something About Mary,” Ben Stiller sat in the backyard of his friend Dom whose wife doted upon them ridiculously. Beer, freshly baked cookies and more were brought in succession, and Ben’s character expressed how much he wanted something similar in his own life. Dom shrugged, glanced down complacently, and said, “Every day’s better than the next.” Lost on many a viewer, I am sure, the line was a harbinger of what was to come.

Every day is better than the next. Odd as the wording may be, there are actually some sake that are like that. Namely, contest sake made with massively milled rice and brewed using modern yeast strains.

I was at a ginjo tasting, one of many in the fall, and most of the 85 brewers there had a contest sake in their lineup for the day. One particular brewer, never at a loss for words (a fact that apparently bugs some of his more taciturn industry colleagues - but I digress) and I were chatting about his contest sake. It was the fall; the national contest for which it was brewed was held last May.

“It’s been in a deep freeze since then,” he began, “kept at -5C (23F) the whole time.” The contest is over, at least the one for which it was brewed, and they just have what remains hanging around for small sales, for tastings, and for the fall version of the spring contest…

…that spring contest being none other than the Zenkoku Shinshu Kampyoukai, or National New Sake Appraisal, at which this sake in question won a gold last year. There are various regional competitions around the country in the fall, using that specially brewed sake after it has been laid down for six months.

My brewer friend continued. “Sake like this, made with special contest yeasts and very highly milled rice will never get better than the moment it's born. After that it’s pretty much a long, slow demise.”

And why is this? Because those yeasts, as ostentatious and attention-getting as they are, do not provide the components of body and aroma that age well. “Sake like that Naraman over there,” he said, selecting one very good sake from amongst many in the brewer-manned booths along the far wall, “made with things like yeast Number Nine, that sake will taste better after a few months. But not this stuff.”

Again, it is a matter of its composition and its constitution. Contest sake is like daiginjo on steroids; intense, sharp, clean and focused in both flavors and aromas. (And good, mind you! This is not meant to be a detraction!) “Regular” sake has more components like amino acids, sugars, proteins and various acids that interact and meld, allowing richness, flavor, balance and well-roundedness to emerge over a few months. There is much less meat on the bones of contest sake, whereas normal sake has meaty stuff that you can grab onto and whack with a car antenna. And this leads to positive changes over a few months of maturation.

As the brewer of that gold medal winner pronounced, “You press it, you pasteurize, you deep chill it. And from there, it basically deteriorates. After six months at that cold temperature, perhaps the corners will be a bit more well rounded, but we’ll not see much improvement in flavor or aromas, you see.”

Such delicate sake matures and changes quite fast. And, in fact, this is part of the skill of winning a contest. Not only does a brewer have to brew good sake, he or she needs to know just how it will be handled, and how it will change between the time it is submitted and the time it will be tasted. For example, they would need to know how a sake will change over two weeks at room temperature, after they have brewed it and kept it cold. Skill in this arena is important as well.

At the risk of sounding confusing, though, let us remember that almost all sake should be drunk young, and generally not aged (with a few exceptions, of course!). In other words, more aging is not better. But at the same time, most sake benefits from six months to a year of in-brewery maturation for the above-described reasons. It can lead to balance, depth, richness and more at first. But once they ship it to us, they want us to drink it fairly soon. So while contest sake starts to fade away right away, most sake matures gracefully for a short spell, then levels out before heading south for the long haul.

With the ever-present exceptions that pepper every part of the sake world notwithstanding, most sake needs a short period of maturation, after which it should not be aged. That is the short version of the story.

But contest sake is different. For such sake, every day is indeed better than the next.