Patrick McGovern of the University of Pennsylvania, a hero of brewers, meadmakers and winemakers around the world, passed away August 24, 2025. Known as “The Indiana Jones of Ancient Wine,” his work is the foundation of our modern understanding of ancient fermentation. Dr. Pat, as he was known to his friends, was genuinely brilliant. He was also a wonderfully kind, humble and generous man. He is survived by his wife, Doris.
Dr. McGovern and I penned books that were published only a few weeks apart in 2003. While waiting for my book release I learned of Dr. McGovern’s Ancient Wine, The Search for the Origins of Viniculture, and read glowing reviews.
I ordered it straightaway. My copy of Ancient Wine arrived the week The Compleat Meadmaker hit the shelves. What I read in the first few pages dropped my jaw. By the tenth page of both books, we’d both speculated on the genesis of the human control of fermentation.
I found Dr. McGovern’s contact info at U Penn and immediately emailed him. He responded very promptly, and I sent him a copy of my book. We had a lot to talk about.
Thus began a friendship that would last a couple of decades. We had wonderful conversations ranging from the advent of human control of fermentation, to his memories of globetrotting expeditions, to Ötzi the Iceman. Joys, all.
Dr. McGovern’s quest began with trying to understand the origins of wine. His love of wine began when he and his wife Doris spent time one summer working at a vineyard in the Mosel Valley in Germany. McGovern went on to obtain multiple degrees, including doctoral degrees in archaeology and chemistry. He mastered both relic recovery and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry, allowing him to tie his great loves together: fermented beverages, ancient history and chemistry.
Voila! Fermentation archaeochemistry!
Dr. McGovern’s standing became unparalleled among archaeologists, historians, and the realms of commercial and amateur brewing, mead making and winemaking. Dr. Andrew Waterhouse, Director of the Robert Mondavi Institute of Wine and Food Science at UC Davis from 2018-2023 recognized Dr. Pat’s innovation and influence. “Patrick McGovern initiated and led the archaeology of wine, beer, and other alcoholic beverages with technology he developed. He was in demand to study different sites to establish who had created the oldest wine or beer. He will be remembered and missed in the wine and archaeology fields.”
All that exploded as his work revealed the nature of ancient alcohol and clarified that the earliest fermentations were mixed fermentations. The oldest for which he found archaeochemical evidence was the 9,000-year-old Jiahu from China.
His testing identified residues of rice, honey, grapes and hawthorn berries. The earliest fermentations he analyzed each came back with indicators for multiple fermentable ingredients. I loved that most contained honey.
Ancient Wine, Uncorking the Past, and Ancient Brews are among the numerous publications that chronicled McGovern’s archaeochemical work on artifacts and residues from Godin Tepe, Hajji Firuz, and the Midas Tomb at Gordian in Turkey. Knowledge from his analyses led to collaborations with Sam Calagione and Dogfish Head, recreating beverages such as The Midas Touch, Theobroma, and Chateau Jiahu.
Expressing his respect, Calagione said, “I’ve had the pleasure of knowing and working with Dr. Pat McGovern for a quarter century. Time flies when you are having fun and Dr. Pat made science and history super fun as we worked together to weave Ancient Ales into the modern global craft brewing universe. By title, Dr. Pat was a molecular biologist, but by legend, he will always be remembered as the Indiana Jones of historic fermented beverages. Dr. Pat truly had the Midas Touch.”
He authored eight books and was recognized worldwide as the leading molecular microbiological fermentation archaeologist. He was featured in numerous publications and media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, NPR, Smithsonian Magazine and multiple wine periodicals. Dr. Cory Emal of Eastern Michigan University organized one of many pairing dinners: “Pat helped divine the essence of past civilizations through the chemical signatures left in their drinking vessels. He was generous with that knowledge and with the stories that connected those ancient cultures to our own. We were honored to have him host an Ancient Ales–paired dinner near the launch of our Fermentation Sciences program at EMU, and years later, attendees still tell me—unprompted and out of nowhere—what a great evening it was. That was the kind of gift Pat gave people.”
Dr. McGovern was reluctant to publicly explore some of his most fascinating thoughts on the origins of fermentation among humans. He revered hard science. If it couldn’t be supported by evidence, he was unwilling to put it in a paper, but he did allow his imagination to run wild a bit. When and how did it all start?
Over bottles of wine, we mused that control of fermentation is one of a dwindling set of characteristics that genuinely separates humans from other species. Many of the measures earlier put forth as definitive — tool use, language, reasoning skills, domestication of other species — have since been recognized in other species.
Control of fermentation, however, is uniquely human. Dr. McGovern viscerally understood how much fermentation has contributed to the advancement of human culture from deepest antiquity to this day.
Students of mead, beer, and wine all embraced Dr. McGovern and the knowledge he unearthed. His feelings evolved toward the probability that mixed fermentations (“Extreme Beverages” in his words) were likely at the root of what later became mead, beer and wine.
Julia Herz, executive director of the American Homebrewers Association, summed up his importance, saying, “Dr. Patrick McGovern’s loss looms large and is not just a loss for beer and historians, but a loss to our culture. He saw the significance of those who brew, spanning back to the beginning of fermentation to today, and understood the relevance of homebrewers and professional brewers in our society. Not many see the big picture like he did.”
Dr. McGovern and I presented together and separately at National Homebrewers Conferences, and we shared hotel rooms when we did. Having a conversation with Dr. McGovern over a glass of wine or a beer was a veritable intellectual amusement park ride.
Tyler Flynn, an educator and homebrewer living in suburban Philadelphia, became friends with Dr. McGovern after meeting him at a Penn Museum event in April of 2019.
“Aside from his well-noted brilliance as a scholar of the ancient world, Pat was just as special as a human being,” Flynn says. “I found him to be imaginative, humble, and sensitive to the mysteries of life. Sharing a beer and conversation with him was always a privilege.”
McGovern’s later work delved into the probability that Georgia was the location of the earliest deliberate, controlled wine production in the world. His conclusions gained him many devoted followers among that country’s wine makers and academics. The outpouring of grief and appreciation from the Georgian wine community has been profound.
As is frequently the case in revisiting the lives of departed loved ones, especially academics, so much “new-to-me” information about Dr. McGovern was revealed. That information is inevitably something that I wish I could discuss with him — newly provoked conjecture on ancient fermentation history that deserves a talk over a beer or glass of wine. But it’s too late.
The glasses of wine and beer, and late-night conversations with Dr. McGovern are now history of their own. Cherished history, it surely is.
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Ken Schramm
Ken Schramm has been brewing and making mead since 1988. He is the author of “The Compleat Meadmaker,” a foundational work for mead in the US. He is the co-owner and co-founder of Schramm’s Mead and Schramm’s Orchards in the metropolitan Detroit area.