Coffee is the most valuable
legally traded commodity in the world. We love it, we rely on it, and we drink
it in massive quantities. It is estimated that 2.25 billion cups of coffee are
consumed each day worldwide. New Yorkers are said to drink 7 times the amount
of any other U.S. city, which is why it may seem like there is a Starbucks on
every corner of Manhattan. Famed French writer and philosopher Voltaire was
rumored to have drunk 40 – 50 cups per day. Coffee is a daily ritual in the
lives of millions of humans around the globe. Where exactly did this
caffeinated phenomenon begin?
As with most foods that have been
around for centuries, coffee’s beginnings are enveloped in mystery and lore.
There is a popular Ethiopian legend wherein coffee is discovered by a goat
herder named Kaldi, who found his goats frolicking and full of energy after
eating the red fruit of the coffee shrub. Kaldi tried the fruit for himself and
had a similar reaction. After witnessing their strange behavior, a monk took
some of the fruit back to his fellow monks; they too spent the night awake and
alert. Of course, they would have been reacting to coffee’s high dose of
caffeine. This natural stimulant also serves as an inborn plant pesticide,
protecting the coffee fruit from insects.
Before coffee became our morning
beverage of choice, it appeared in a variety of different preparations. In its
most basic, unprocessed form, coffee is a cherry-like fruit, which becomes red
when ripe; the coffee bean is found at the center of the red coffee fruit.
Early on, the fruit were mixed with animal fat to create a protein rich snack
bar. At one point, the fermented pulp was used to make a wine-like concoction;
incidentally, a similar beverage was made from the cacao fruit, before the
advent of chocolate, which goes to show that humans are especially adept at
finding new ways to imbibe. Another drink that appeared around 1000 A.D. was
made from the whole coffee fruit, including the beans and the hull. It wasn’t
until the 13th century that people began to roast coffee beans, the first step
in the process of making coffee as we know it today.
The word “coffee” has roots in
several languages. In Yemen it earned the name qahwah, which was originally a romantic term
for wine. It later became the Turkish kahveh,
then Dutch koffie and
finally coffee in
English.
The modern version of roasted
coffee originated in Arabia. During the 13th century, coffee was extremely
popular with the Muslim community for its stimulant powers, which proved useful
during long prayer sessions. By parching and boiling the coffee beans,
rendering them infertile, the Arabs were able to corner the market on coffee
crops. In fact, tradition says that not a single coffee plant existed outside
of Arabia or Africa until the 1600s, when Baba Budan, an Indian pilgrim, left
Mecca with fertile beans fastened to a strap across his abdomen. Baba’s beans
resulted in a new and competitive European coffee trade.
In 1616, the Dutch founded the
first European-owned coffee estate in Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, then Java in
1696. The French began growing coffee in the Caribbean, followed by the Spanish
in Central America and the Portuguese in Brazil. European coffee houses sprang
up in Italy and later France, where they reached a new level of popularity.
Now, it is de rigueur for
Parisians to indulge in a cup of coffee and a baguette or croissant at the
numerous coffee cafes throughout Paris.
Coffee plants reached the New
World during the early 18th century, though the drink wasn’t really popular in
America until the Boston Tea Party of 1773, when making the switch from tea to
coffee became something of a patriotic duty. The Civil War and other conflicts
that followed also helped to increase coffee consumption, as soldiers relied on
the caffeine for a boost of energy. It may have started a bit later here, but
Americans love coffee just as much as the rest of the world. Teddy Roosevelt
himself is counted among America’s great coffee drinkers due to his rumored
consumption of a gallon of coffee daily! Roosevelt is also said to have coined
Maxwell House’s famous “Good to the Last Drop” slogan after being served the
coffee at Andrew Jackson’s historical home, the Hermitage, in Tennessee.
By the late 1800s, coffee had
become a worldwide commodity, and entrepreneurs began looking for new ways to
profit from the popular beverage. In 1864, John and Charles Arbuckle, brothers
from Pittsburgh, purchased Jabez Burns’ newly invented self-emptying coffee
bean roaster. The Arbuckle brothers began selling pre-roasted coffee in paper bags
by the pound. They named their coffee “Ariosa,” and found great success selling
it to the cowboys of the American West. It wasn’t long before James Folger
followed suit and began selling coffee to the gold miners of California. This
blazed the trail for several other big name coffee producers, including Maxwell
House and Hills Brothers.
In the 1960s, a certain awareness for specialty coffee started to grow, inspiring the opening of the first Starbucks in Seattle in 1971. Today, the grass-roots coffee movement continues to grow with the increase of small independently-owned cafes boasting sustainable, locally roasted, fair trade beans. Coffee has become an artistic trade that is valued for its complexity of flavors and terroir, much like wine.
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