Tasty by John McQuaid Page A

turned to vinegar. The only choice was to drink and enjoy. Eventually, such accidents became recipes.
    The earliest evidence of systematic beverage making was found in the 1990s at Jiahu, an excavated Chinese village along a branch of the Yellow River, settled about nine thousand years ago. An archaeological dig revealed evidence of surprising sophistication for a village dating back so soon after the dawn of civilization: A cemetery, holding hundreds of graves, sat beside clusters of mud huts. Social ranks had been established; some bodies were buried with jewelry, decorated tortoise shells, and ritual pottery vessels. People had fine toolmaking skills and, evidently, a talent for music: some graves contained flutes made from carved bone, the earliest ever found. They could still be played, and produced light, delicate notes. Archaeologists also uncovered some of the earliest known Chinese glyphs, the beginnings of written language.They were etched into bones and shells: an eye, a window, and signs for the numbers one, two, eight, and ten.
    Jiahu’s artisans had also built earthen kilns to fire clay vessels, and many jars and pottery fragments were unearthed. When McGovern saw the clay jars for the first time, he was astounded: they were clearly beverage containers, resembling the wine amphorae of ancient Greece, though vastly older. Best of all, they weren’t empty: a dried, reddish sheen lined the interiors of some, the remnants of a liquid.
    Ancient drinks are McGovern’s specialty. The work is challenging because alcohol doesn’t leave traces: it evaporates quickly, and stray molecules are likely to be consumed by microbes. Most of his evidence is circumstantial, based on other ingredients he can decipher. Chemically analyzing the remains of the drink, McGovern found tartaric acid, which comes from fruit. The signature of beeswax pointed to honey as another ingredient. Finally, a test for carbon isotopes showed that rice had been present. Traces of tree resins (often used by ancient vintners as a preservative, and conferring a lemony tang) and herbs also appeared. The beverage would have been a cross between mead and wine, made from fermented honey, grapes, hawthorn berries, and rice. It was probably used in religious ceremonies. But it was also ordinary: drink-infused pottery shards were found both in graves and in homes. This was Jiahu’s equivalent of a six-pack.
    McGovern wasn’t satisfied with knowing which chemical ingredients were used to make the Jiahu grog. He wanted to taste it. A sip, he felt, could help summon to life previously lost and inaccessible moments. It could help explain how civilization had changed humanity, reaching beyond the usual musty clues into an ancient people’s lived experience—not just what they tasted but how they tasted, and felt.
    In 1999, McGovern had teamed with Sam Calagione, founder of the Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in Milton, Delaware, to re-create an ancient brew from ingredients found in the 2,700-year-old tomb of King Midas, in Turkey. Calagione was motivated by naysayers who had denounced his early craft beers and their unexpected ingredients, such as juniper berries, chicory, and licorice root. “A lot of so-called purists, I’d say elitists, would say, ‘You’re screwing with the history of brewing!’” he said. Researching that history, Calagione found that modern beer recipes dated to a 1516 Bavarian law called the Reinheitsgebot , or “beer purity act,” which mandated that the only ingredients of beer be water, barley, and hops (plus yeast, which wasn’t known in the sixteenth century). The law is still in force in Germany, though imported beers are exempt.
    Calagione set out to recover some lost pre–purity act brewing traditions. When he met McGovern, he said, “I could tell we were kindred spirits.” Together, they tried to approximate ancient ingredients for the King Midas brew. To