Patrick McGovern (died August 24th 2025, aged 80) was a chemist and archaeologist who devoted his career to identifying and recreating ancient fermented beverages. He ran the Biomolecular Archaeology Project for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages and Health at the University of Pennsylvania Museum.
McGovern began as an archaeologist after earlier training in piano, chemistry and divinity. He spent 20 years excavating and studying pots in Jordan before shifting his focus to the residues left inside ancient vessels. His method involved dissolving ceramic powder scraped from vessel interiors in a methanol-and-chloroform solvent, then using the resulting solution to identify organic compounds that would reveal the original contents. Though alcohol itself evaporates over time, acids such as tartaric, malic, saccinic and citric betrayed the presence of fruit.
McGovern discovered the earliest known sample of a fermented drink, from a 9,000-year-old tomb at Jiahu in China. He also identified the earliest grape wine, from the Georgian Caucasus, dating to around 8,000 years ago. He argued that in Neolithic times there was no firm divide between wines and beers; both contained fruit, grains and honey, making them "extreme beverages". The standard method of starting fermentation in those times was to chew grains to convert starch to sugar, spit out the pulp and rely on airborne yeasts. In the interests of science, he once spent eight hours chewing corn to make Mesoamerican chicha in the correct way.
McGovern collaborated with Dogfish Head, a craft brewery in Delaware, to recreate ancient beverages based on his findings. Their most commercially successful product was "Midas Touch", a blend of white Muscat grapes, saffron and honey recreated from vessels found in the presumed tomb of King Midas in Anatolia. His personal favourite was "Chateau Jiahu", a blend of sake yeast, hawthorn berries and honey from the Jiahu dig, which he described as having a grapy nose, fine effervescence and a tingling finish. A third recreation, "Theobroma", was based on Aztec frothable chocolate. It kept the chillies from the original recipe but omitted the flakes of blood from the knives used for human sacrifice.
McGovern contended that human progress was tightly tied to alcohol. He noted that almost every living creature, from fruit flies to elephants, is drawn to it, and that one of the earliest primates, the Malaysian tree shrew, consumes the equivalent of nine glasses of wine a day. He argued that the builders of the Pyramids might not have completed the work without the four-to-five litres of beer they were given daily, and that beer was perhaps more vital than bread to human civilisation: "You needed bread to exist; you needed alcohol to enjoy existing."
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