ORIGIN & ODYSSEY - A BRIEF HISTORY

For this we need to go back to the bean itself. The origins of coffee are found in the East and are enshrined in myth. A popular tale recounts that Kaldi, an Abyssinian goatherd, noticed the lively behaviour of his herd after they had nibbled on some red berries. After chewing on these himself and passing the knowledge of its effects on to a local monk, the history of coffee began, leading it to become the second most consumed beverage after water in the world.

This geographically and culturally global drop moved through the ancestral precedent of its brewed form in the Yemen, to aiding Sufis remain awake during their rites, to Turkish coffee houses under the Ottoman Empire. It entered Western Europe via Venice and by 1750 this black gold was the accompaniment to stimulated discussions on politics, literature, and business in the coffee houses that developed across Europe.

In London, these forerunners of the café were called ‘penny universities’, as anyone could join in the conversation by buying a dish of coffee. This coffeehouse movement gave birth to the first London stock exchange in 1773, and provided a platform for revolutionaries in France. Coffee itself provided a welcome alternative to Americans after their protests in the Boston Tea Party. While these are just some examples of coffee’s prominence, it is also evident that certain acts of theft greatly aided the spread of this commodity. The Dutch stole beans from Mocha in Yemen and took them to colonial Java in Indonesia, where some of the world’s most exceptional beans are now cultivated. After growing coffee in greenhouses in Amsterdam, another act of pilferage was enabled, and the French stole plants and took them to Martinique in 1714, which became the birthplace of New World coffee industry that now accounts for 90% of modern production.