Coffee History

The facts about the discovery and early history of coffee remain hidden behind a veil of legend and folklore. Anyone who's heard anything about the origins of coffee knows about Kaldi the Ethiopian goat herder who noticed his goats became friskier after eating the red berries of a certain shrub. He tried the berries and suddenly became very energetic as well. At some point he shared the "magic" berries w/ others including the abbot of the local monastery who after trying them declared them to be the devil's work and threw them into the fire. The ensuing aroma from the scorched beans was quickly noticed and eventually the monks learned to make the beverage we call coffee to stay awake for their prayers. This story has many other variations as well.

Another story mentions Sheik Omar, an Arabian physician and priest, who was exiled with other followers of Sheik Schadheli to the desert to die. As a last desperate act Omar and his friends boiled the fruit from an unknown plant and ate it as a broth. Not only were they saved but their miraculous survival was seen as a religious sign by the people of Mocha the nearest town. Supposedly the plant and its beverage were named Mocha as a result of this amazing event. Yet another coffee legend says that the Archangel Gabriel saved Mohammed during a political battle when he was extremely fatigued. After only a few sips of the heavenly brew Mohammed had the energy to unhorse forty men and please forty women.

Although coffee is an old beverage it's not ancient. Neither the drink nor the coffee plant is mentioned in the first recorded histories. The earliest indigenous coffee plants are believed to be from the Kaffa region of Ethiopia. A lot of evidence shows that coffee was traded with Arabians as early as 800 B.C. which explains its existence in Yemen when Europeans first discovered coffee plants cultivated there. However, others believe coffee arrived in Arabia much later when Ethiopia invaded Southern Arabia in 525 A.D.

The earliest uses of coffee didn't even involve the much more modern techniques of roasting and brewing. We do know, however, that beginning as early as 850 B.C. coffee beans were chewed raw for centuries in Ethiopia & Yemen. The Galla tribe of Ethiopia wrapped green coffee beans in balls of animal fat for long journeys. Could this be the first trail mix? Other early uses of coffee were as wine, then medicine and finally as drink very similar to what we drink today.

The first commercial removal of the coffee seed and skin from the berry is recorded as early as 1000 A.D. when the bean pulp and husks were fermented to produce an aromatic wine. The coffee berry is still fermented in Ethiopia and some Arabian countries to produce an alcoholic beverage. Interestingly enough the pulp of Ethiopian coffee berries is sold for more than the beans themselves.

Sometime between 1100 and 1200 A.D., shortly after Arabs discovered how to boil water, they made a beverage called qahwa (which literally means prevents sleep but was also their word for wine), by initially boiling the green beans. Since the roasting process chemically changes the coffee bean the taste is very different than this first brew. Around 1300 A.D. the process of removing the hulls from the beans and then roasting and grinding the beans began. The resulting powder mixed with boiling water and drunk whole including the grounds.

By the early fourteenth century coffee as a beverage became immensely popular spreading from Egypt to Damascus in 1530 and throughout Syria after 1532. The first coffee shop opened in Constantinople in 1475 followed by more in various Arabian cities. These public cafes were popular gathering spots for businessmen, politicians, mullahs, and poets of the day for relaxation, conversation and music. Coffee addiction became so great that various governments, especially in Syria, began to restrict and in some cases ban coffee consumption. Although they cited coffee's intoxicating properties the real reason behind these controls was to limit the social gatherings and festivities believed to be incompatible with Koran teachings. The fact that in some areas the gatherings in the cafes reduced attendance in the mosques also caused conflict. In the end, though, coffee's popularity won out over all attempted restrictions.

Coffee reached Europe via traders such as Pietro della Valle in the late 1500's through the port of Venice principally from the ports of Alexandria and Smyrna. Although initially challenged as a satanic drink, Pope Clement VIII was so impressed by it that he gave it the Church's official approval. From Italy coffee spread into the rest of Europe including England where it was introduced by Nathaniel Canopius, a student from Crete, in Balliol College in Oxford in 1637. A Greek by the name of Psqua Rosee opened London's first café in front of the church in Saint Michael's Alley, Cornhill. He produced the first English language coffee ad and the first newspaper advertisement for coffee appeared in The Public Adviser based in London. Lloyds's Coffee House, another popular London café, whose name became even more famous when it later converted from coffee shop to insurance company.

Jean de la Roque first brought coffee to Marseilles in 1644 and in 1660 several bags of coffee came to Marseilles via Alexandria for public sale. However, the Turkish Ambassador to the Court of Louis XIV, Sulliman Aga was the first to popularize coffee in Paris around 1669 when he had his slaves serve his guests the best coffee from Moka. The Parisians enthusiastically adopted the strong, fragrant, hot beverage as much for the traditional Turkish serving style-poured from gold and silver fonts into small porcelain coffee cups called zarfs and placed on gold flecked embroidered napkins which made coffee fashionable and formal-as for the drink itself. By 1789 the number of cafes in Paris had grown to around 745 and unlike the men's club atmosphere of England women were welcomed in Parisian cafes further increasing its popularity.

The coffee drinking custom took hold in Germany around 1670 via either Holland or France. The first German café was established in Hamburg in 1677 by a Dutch merchant. In 1732 in Leipzig Johann Sebastian Bach composed his widely known "Coffee Cantata" at least partly as an effort to spread news about the drink as well as to entertain the Café Zimmerman's clients there. Although Frederick the Great of Prussia initially objected to coffee in the belief that its importation caused capital to leave the country and encouraged his subjects to drink beer instead, he later discovered coffee to be a good revenue source founding state owned coffee roasting companies in 1781 and then creating a government monopoly over the coffee trade.

Evidence indicates that the Europeans hijacked coffee plants from the Arabs as early as the late 1500's, but because the plants couldn't survive the harsh European winters its unauthorized export was effectively controlled for the time being. However, Baba Budan was able to sneak coffee out of Arabia into the jungles near Chikmagalgur in southern India where it flourished. The true European coffee trade pioneers, though, were the Dutch who began coffee cultivation colonies first in Ceylon in 1658 and later in Java, Indonesia in 1696. That plantation was destroyed after an earthquake and flood. Henricus Zwaardecroon made a second attempt in 1699 cultivating Malabaar seedlings which became the source of future coffee plants in all the Dutch Asian colonies.

Coffee was introduced into North America as early as 1607 by Captain John Smith in Jamestown but wasn't commonly available until 1670 where it was sold in Boston. The rise of coffee as a New World drink coincided with the rejection of British tea after the Boston Tea Party of 1773. In 1810 Boston built the Exchange Coffee House, a seven story building, which was probably the most expensive and largest structure associated with the coffee business during that time. Later New York City founded the famous Tontine Coffee House after "The Merchants Exchange was formed there.

The first coffee plant, of the Arabica variety from Java, to reach the Americas was sent to Martinique in the Caribbean in 1713 by King Louis XIV but it didn't survive. Then in 1723, while visiting France, Martinique Infantry Captain Chevalier Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu decided to take a plant from the Paris Plant Garden back to his island post. After barely surviving the arduous journey the weakened plant was revived and gave rise most of the coffee grown in the Antilles and the rest of the Americas. Coffee cultivation spread to Guadelupe and adjacent islands after the first successful harvest in 1726. Coffee cultivation had already been introduced to Haiti and Santo Domingo in 1716 but in 1726 these islands received additional seedlings from the Martinique plants.

In 1718 the Dutch brought the coffee bush to Surinam and it was then taken to French Cayenne in 1722 and later to a Portuguese colony in Para, Brazil in 1723. The Englishman, Nicholas Laws, introduced coffee to Jamaica in 1730 and Spanish missionaries took Java Arabica plants to the Philippines in 1740. Coffee came to Guatemala between 1750 and 1760 while Puerto Rican cultivation began in 1755. South America experienced the next growth spurt of coffee cultivation after intensified efforts in Para and Amazonas, Brazil beginning in 1752. Rio de Janeiro received a coffee tree from Goa, the Portuguese colony in India, in 1760 and coffee beans were brought to the Capuchinas monastery in Rio in 1774 by a Belgian monk named Molke. From there it was spread by the plant's future patron saint, Bishop Joachim Bruno, to Minas Gerais, Espiritu Santo, and Sao Paulo during the 7180's.

Coffee cultivation then spread from Brazil to Peru, Chile, Bolivia, and Paraguay. It then went to Panama and Costa Rica coffee cultivation began in 1791, but Costa Rica didn't begin exportation until around 1840. Venezuela got its start with a plant shipped from Martinique in 1784. From the Antilles coffee cultivation made its way to Mexico in 1790 with Vera Cruz exports beginning in 1802. In 1817 Vera Cruz experienced a dramatic increase in cultivation through the efforts of Juan Antonio Gomez. Tuxtla in the state of Chiapas, Mexico, received its coffee plants from an Italian resident of San Pablo, San Marcos, Guatemala in 1847. Hawaiian coffee originated from beans brought from Rio de Janeiro in 1825. Coffee cultivation began in Honduras in 1835, El Salvador in 1837 and Nicaragua in 1848, although the crops' origins are uncertain for each of those countries.

By 1893 the coffee plant made its journey full circle to Kenya and Tanzania where coffee plants were introduced. The coffee plant therefore was the first plant to be cultivated world wide. Obviously this wide spread distribution dramatically changed the world coffee market from the monopoly held by the Arab world in the early 1600's to the global competition brought by the entry of Brazilian exports in the mid-1800's. By the end of the nineteenth century the world's major centers of coffee production were in Brazil, Java, Sumatra, Ceylon, India and Central America with addition production spread throughout East and West Africa, the Eastern Archipelagos, Arabia, Antilles, Mexico, and South America.

The three species of coffee trees are Robusta, which is indigenous to Uganda and the Congo; Arabica, which originated in Ethiopia; and Leberica, which is the least recognized variety most similar to Robusta and also from Africa. For all practical purposes Robusta (coffea canephora), and Arabica (coffea Arabica) are the two types of coffee trees used in commercial production today.

Buy Green Mountain Coffee Now at Coffee for Less! »