I’d set an intention to have a sober year. A very sober,
clear-headed year. I mean, when was the last time you didn’t drink for an
entire year? For most people I know the answer fell somewhere south of
childhood. And that struck me as funny. Questions of addiction and compulsion
and overused coping mechanisms aside, it made me wonder how conscious the choice
to drink really is.
And personally, 2011 left my mind feeling like a gummed up
engine. Whatever that stuff is in Chevron gas, I wanted it. To clear my mind’s
pistons, lube up my psyche, and honestly see how this engine can run. Sobriety
was my mental Techron.
Suffice it to say it was an interesting year. Once you strip
away a coping device, even one you don’t use frequently, you learn a lot about
yourself. I learned that when I stopped drinking life got a little less
comfortable in lot of little ways. I noticed social dynamics with much more
sensitivity. Maybe I wasn’t as funny as I thought I was. Maybe you weren’t
either. And once I got more comfortable with the uncomfortability, I realized
how uncomfortable it made other people who drank when I didn’t.
Now as I complete my commitment to a year free of
intoxicants, I am fairly aware that it was an easy thing to let go of. But for
a summer trip to the craft brew mecca that is Portland, and a subtle twinge on
the tongue that crept up with Fall’s turn to cooler weather, I really didn’t
miss it.
A few weeks ago I stumbled across a lecture by biomolecular
archeologist Patrick McGovern, about his book “Uncorking the Past”. McGovern’s
fantastic contribution to history is to analyze the fragments of old clay
vessels sifted from the sand of archaeological sites thousands of years old to
see what folks were partying with back in the day. The talk I heard was about a
Turkish beverage 3000 years old, a Chinese wine 7000 years old, and a cacao
infused South American beverage a few thousand years old.
Say what?
McGovern’s lecture briefs the utterly captivating way he can
take chemical traces grabbed by the porous clay of the vessel to make a map of
the beverage that was once inside. Grapes have a certain chemical marker, as do
barley and honey. These chemical profiles are in fact what contemporary vintners
use to create wines to fit the popular palette. Blending their grapes to suit
what consumers want to consume.
McGovern presented his findings to a group of professional
brewers, and at the end of his talk offered offhandedly that should any of them
be interested in recreating these drinks, he could share their thumbprints.
Needless to say, he was mobbed by craft brewers dying to brew them. I mean, who
wouldn’t be dying of curiosity? What the heck did that honey barley wine from
3000 years ago taste like? Cacao beer?
With the mental clarity imparted by a year of sobriety, I
could feel my imagination and curiosity firing on all pistons. As it happened,
one of my favorite breweries won the chance to do it: Dogfish Head.
I think you see where this is going for me…
I’d never tried this trio of Dogfish brews, but I recognized
the purple thumbprint on the Midas Touch label when I saw it on McGovern’s
slide. I hopped on the web to read more about Dogfish Head’s series of historic
ales, which turns out to be much more extensive than the Chinese, Turkish and
South American ales McGovern’s talk describes. And, thoughtful guys that they
are, the online Fish Finder will guide you to places near you who’ve ordered a
specific brew.
Midas Touch, it turns out, is in bottles and on tap just a
short distance from my apartment.
Chateau Jiahu, named after the city in China where the ghost
of the drink was discovered, was a little harder to find. Yet there in a Sunset
Boulevard liquor store 1.6 miles from home perches a row of sexy, bare-backed,
sleek-bobbed China dolls slinking into deep refrigeration, the 1920s inspired
label of the ancient Chinese drink.
The seductively named Theobroma, a word that refers to the compound in chocolate and translates as ‘food of the gods’, hasn’t turned up yet. And the truth is, I’m not really planning my first drink. Tonight is new year’s eve, and I hope to be asleep when the clock ticks us into another arbitrary 365 day cycle. At some point, I may decide to have a drink, to give in to the craving, to immerse myself in the creature comfort of a good brew. At some point, craving will intersect the ebb of my psychic rigor. Hopefully one of those ales will be around then.
Parick McGovern’s fantastic talk at the Getty:
And his book:
