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History

Legend has it that a Yemeni goat herder, Kaldi, discovered coffee through his goats. He noticed their overly-excited behaviour after eating red berries from a certain bush. Kaldi tasted the berries and soon found himself just as excited as his goats. News of the berries spread to the local monastery and the monks soon discovered that this fruit from the shiny green plant could help them stay awake for their prayers. News of the shiny green plant with red berries spread from monastery to monastery, from Yemen throughout the Arab world to Cairo, Medina and to Mecca.

One early use for coffee would have little appeal today. The Abyssinian tribe (now Ethiopia) used coffee, but not as a drink. They would wrap the beans in animal fat as their only source of nutrition while on raiding parties.

Yemeni cultivated coffee in the sixth century, but it was not until the thirteenth century that the beans were roasted and made into anything resembling the drink we know today. Turkey was the first country to adopt it as a drink, often adding spices such as cloves, cinnamon, cardamom and anise to the brew.

The Ottoman Turks introduced coffee to Constantinople in 1453. The world's first coffee shop, Kiva Han, in Istanbul, opened there in 1471.

The first coffee house opened in Mecca in the late fifteenth century. Coffee became so popular that the governor tried to ban it, for its influence might foster opposition to his rule. Mohammed had given it his blessing by saying that after his first cup of coffee, he felt able "to unseat forty horsemen". Coffee was sacred and the governor was executed.

Coffee was introduced much later to countries beyond Arabia whose inhabitants believed it to be a delicacy and guarded its secrets as if they were top-secret military plans. The government forbade exportation of the plant from Muslim nations, unless it had been boiled or parched, so that it was infertile. The actual spread of coffee started illegally. One Arab named Baba Budan smuggled beans to some mountains near Mysore, India, and started a farm there. From there the Dutch started plantations in Java, which for many years were some of the most important in the world.

Coffee was introduced to Europe in at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Coffee was believed by some Christians to be the devil's drink. Pope Vincent III heard this and decided to taste it before he banished it. He enjoyed it so much he baptised it, saying, "Coffee is so delicious it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it." It then spread from West Italy to England and to France and soon coffeehouses had opened all over Europe.

Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse opened in 1668 and eventually became Lloyd's of London, the best-known insurance company in the world, because of the frequent visits from merchants and maritime insurance agents.

In 1683 the Turks were defeated in the Battle of Vienna, and unfortunately they left behind a mysterious sack of beans. Franciszek Jerzy Kulczycki, a Viennese officer was granted the sack of beans, recognised it as coffee and he started the first coffeehouse in Vienna.

In the early eighteenth century, a French naval officer Gabriel Mathieu do Clieu stole a seedling and transported it to the island of Martinique. From there the plant started coffee plantations of the West Indies and Central and Southern America. Eventually 90 percent of the world's coffee spread from this plant.

Brazil's coffee industry had quite romantic beginnings. The government sent Lieutenant Colonel Francisco de Melo Palheta to arbitrate a border dispute between the French and the Dutch colonies in Guiana. He settled the dispute, and had a brief affair with the governor's wife. When she said farewell to Palheta, she did so with a bouquet that contained coffee cuttings and seeds. Thus, France's well-guarded plantations were no longer exclusive in America.

Coffee Today

Coffee is now one of the most widely consumed beverages in the world. Over 400 billion cups are drunk each year. It is now grown in more than 50 tropical countries. In Brazil alone, over 5 million people are employed in the cultivation and harvesting of over 3 billion coffee plants.