Or rather, I and my fiancée would. I made two cups of brown rice, plunked it down in the living room, and we went to work, repeatedly filling and emptying our mouths. The experience was disgusting and oddly satisfying. The result, after half an hour, was a quart of something resembling that healthy whole-grain cereal I dreaded as a kid. I heated the mash to 155°F and let it sit for an hour. After straining out the solids, I was left with a beige liquid, cloudy and sweet.

Fermentation was the final hurdle. As it turns out, you don't have to go hunting for wild yeast—it will find you. Raw honey is full of it; diluted four to one and left in an open vessel, honey will ferment all by itself. And grape skins are covered with wild yeast (that white, cloudy stuff). I concocted a honey-wine starter culture, which I used to prime a pot of fresh honey and crushed grapes. As for fresh hawthorn berries, that's a long story. I found some dried chopped fruit online, stewed it like prunes, mashed it, and threw it into the mix.

Nine thousand years and one week later, you're wondering how it tasted. I cannot tell a lie: It was unspeakable. To call it swill would be an insult to bad alcohol everywhere. Its angry, vinegary bouquet recalled descriptions of pruno, the prison hooch made of canned fruit cocktail, Wonder Bread, and ketchup.


Undeterred, I repeated the process, this time easing up on the hawthorn and keeping a closer eye on the pot. After a week, a thick barrier of scum floated on the surface, with chunks of

BOLD NOSE

Archaeological chemist Patrick McGovern applies his strict standards to an early batch of "Château Jiahu." It's a tame version of the Neolithic stuff—probably for the better.
grape embedded in it. A few months ago it might have stopped me but no longer. I stabbed it with a turkey baster and tapped into the cloudy bilge below. I performed the tasting on an empty stomach, just in case. Lacking an oenophile's nomenclature and nuance, I can only describe it as a sort of Flintstones wine cooler: sweet and sour, with a honey funk and blurry sight lines. With a second glass I proved to myself that it was drinkable and caught enough of a buzz to trip over the border in my garden. I could hear my Stone Age fraternity brothers cheering.

Around that time, two bottles of Château Jiahu arrived at my door. "It definitely does not taste like beer," Gerhart said over the phone. He described it as having "a smoky profile," which he described as a tribute to Neolithic open flames and wood fires, but which I interpreted as, "Oops, we burned it." It had a dry, sour flavor, bubbly from the carbonation. I held a taste-off with a few close friends. I'm proud to report that the votes were split down the center, although one comment seemed to capture the prevailing attitude: "There's a reason people don't live in the Neolithic anymore."

Discover More

Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture.

Patrick E. McGovern. Princeton University Press, 2003.

The American Homebrewers Association Web site, www.beertown.org, is a help for do-it-yourselfers.

Patrick McGovern explains the methods he used to discover the oldest Chinese alcoholic beverage: "Fermented Beverages of Pre- and Proto-historic China." Patrick McGovern et al. in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 101, No. 51, pages 17593–17598; December 21, 2004. www.pnas.org

Details about Anchor Steam's efforts to re-create a Sumerian brew using a 3,800-year-old recipe are available at www.anchorbrewing.com/beers/ninkasi.htm.