The story of
coffee begins with a green bean hidden in the red cherry of a
coffee tree...
Ethiopia
No one really knows exactly
who or when coffee was first discovered, but we do know it was in
Ethiopia, and legend credits Kaldi, a goat herder, with its
discovery. One day Kaldi found his goats darting and jumping around
after eating berries from a tree he had not seen before. He tried
the berries himself and suddenly felt all kinds of energy and
excitement.
The Ethiopians have been
credited as the first to gather coffee from trees growing wild in
the forest. It is thought that the coffee cherries were chewed at
first, or the beans ground with fat to make energy bars.
Later the Ethiopians brewed
the leaves with boiled water and made a week tea.
Sometime in the 1400s
someone roasted the beans and discovered how good they smelt. They
ground them and brewed a black, potent beverage. Coffee!
Ethiopians have remained
proud of their coffee. It's considered to be a family beverage that
brings friendship and kinship. Even today, if you go into any home
in Ethiopia, the family will prepare coffee before any other
dish.
The Ethiopians follow an
elaborate coffee ceremony that's centuries old and commemorates the
memories of three Sheiks who went into the wilderness in search of
God. When the Sheiks had almost starved God appeared and instructed
them to grind coffee beans for food.
Only the women of the house
can roast the coffee beans. When the beans begin to crackle they
are ladled onto a metal plate and blessed by the spirits of
fertility and prosperity. There are always three servings of coffee
to honour the three Sheiks. The brew is thick and strong. The
eldest member of the family is always served first.
Arab Lands
The Arabs began the first
know cultivation of coffee in the mountains of Yemen.
Nobody really knows where
the word 'coffee' came from but it's thought to have been the Arabs
who named it rather than the Ethiopians.
Soon, thanks to the Sufis,
coffee spread from town to town as a holy ceremonial drink. Wealthy
people set up entire rooms devoted to coffee drinking and the poor
gathered in coffee houses.
Coffee quickly gained a
reputation as a trouble making social brew.
In 1511, the Governor of
Mecca tried to ban the coffee houses. However, the Sultan of Cairo,
the Governor's boss and a coffee lover himself, reversed the
order.
Turkey
As the Turks conquered the
Arab world they inherited coffee and the coffee culture. Coffee
secured a place of itself in the lives of everyday people.
Intellectuals, writers and
poets would come to Turkish coffee houses for conversation and to
debate the issues of the day. Coffee houses were (and still are)
places where Turkish men meet and exchange knowledge. Women were
(and still are) forbidden to enter the coffee houses.
Coffee readings were (and
still are) important to young women in Turkey. A young woman can
have her future divined in the grounds in her cup.
Coffee became a very
precious commodity in Turkey and the Turks were very careful to
keep the monopoly. Eventually a young man names Baba Budan taped
some coffee seeds to his body and smuggled them out of the country.
He began to grow coffee in India.
Soon the Dutch got hold of
the seeds and began growing them too. They transported them to the
colony to Java where native slaves were forced to cultivate the
coffee. By 1683, Mocha and Java were the most sought after beans
and coffee was poised to conquer Europe.
Italy
Coffee came to the west with
a bad reputation. Italian priests regarded the black brew as a
threat to Christianity. They petitioned the Pope to ban it, but
when he tasted it he found it so delicious he decided to baptise it
instead.
The Turks began to trade
with Venice and the first cafe, the Florian opened in 1720 and over
the next 30 years hundreds of cafes opened. There were cafes for
the poor, cafes for the rich and cafes for the foreigners.
Italians love their coffee
and have greatly enriched the worlds coffee culture. The espresso
machine was developed in Milan, Italy and created a coffee that is
strong in taste, aroma and body but weak in caffeine because there
isn't time to extract all the caffeine from the ground coffee.
France
It wants until the late
1600s that coffee made it to France. It was introduced by the
Turkish Sultan, the Ambassador to Paris.
The French are enamoured
with coffee but they don't know how to make it. An Italian,
Francesco Procopio de Coltelli, seizes on this opportunity and
introduced the French to the French cafe. The women were the first
to embrace the cafe society. They would come for tea, coffee,
chocolate and pastries. Soon the men came too. People began to
engage each other in intelligent conversation and debate as coffee
came the beverage of choice, ahead of beer and wine.
England
The first coffee house in
London opened in 1652 by Pasqua Rosse.
The English are well-known
tea drinkers, but by the 1700s there were over 2000 coffee houses
in London alone.
London's coffee houses
spawned may of the city's important businesses and customs. Patrons
tossed coins in a bowl labelled 'to insure promptness' (TIP), and
it is thought this is where tipping was born.
Coffee houses became the
centre of London's social scene. Without alcohol patrons could
visit and have meaningful conversations about the world around
them.
Europe
In 1700, Europeans were
consuming half a million pounds of coffee. One hundred years later,
their consumption had grown to 100 million pounds.
The French were eager to
expand their trade. The opportunity comes when a young French
Lieutenant charms a royal mistress and she gives him a coffee plant
which he nurtures on a voyage to Martinique. Most of the coffee
grown in Latin American probably descends from that one plant.
The French establish large slave run plantations to cultivate
the coffee. The plantations spread to Haiti and by 1790 half of the
worlds coffee was grown on this one island.