History of Coffee

Coffee plants were discovered in the country now known as Ethiopia, in a region on the African side of the Red Sea. The plant became used and cultivated in Yemen between the 13th and 15th Century.

One of the most famous legends regarding the discovery of coffee is that of an Abyssinian goat herder named Kaldi, who tasted wild red coffee cherries after noticing that they made his goats very frisky when they ate them.

The head of a local Sufi monastery realised that the cherries had the properties required to keep his monks alert at their prayers, and produced a drink from these cherries.

During the last half of the 15th Century, coffee drinking spread through the Arabic countries. At this time, the drink was consumed for its physical and medical effects and not for its taste.

Coffee reached Istanbul in around 1550, from then on the European coffee rage began.
The first coffee house in England was located in Oxford and opened in 1650.

A French sailor named Capitaine de Clieu introduced the coffee plant to the Caribbean. A seedling transported from France went on to flourish and multiply with such success that by 1777, there were almost 19 million trees all descending from Capitaine De Clieu’s plant.

A Brazilian spy seduced De Clieu’s wife and managed to obtain enough seeds and shoots to succeed in founding Brazil’s coffee industry; Brazil is now the largest producer of coffee in the world.

When coffee was introduced to Italy the Italian wine merchants were so worried that their trade would plummet that they asked the Pope to ban it! Unfortunately for the merchants, Pope Clementine VIII was so impressed by the aroma and taste; he baptized coffee and pronounced it a Christian beverage.