THE HISTORY OF "COFFEE" AND ITS "ORIGIN"

The history of the coffee bean does not want for drama. Since its first documented use and probably long before stories involving coffee have been rife with intrigue, passion, revolution, and idiosyncratic charm.

             

       Of Goats and Holy Men

Legend has it that the stimulant properties of coffee were discovered sometime before the ninth century by an Abyssinian goatherd named Kaldi. Bored and mischievous, the young man's goats began snacking on coffee cherries while he napped nearby. Waking to find his goats pirouetting off rocks and the surrounding canyon walls, Kaldi collected a handful of the bright red fruit and hastened home to his village imam. As an experiment, the religious leader boiled the cherries in water and then drank the concoction himself. He became alert and lively, so much so that maintaining wakefulness during evening prayers was uncharacteristically effortless. These stimulating properties made coffee an instant hit among the ranks of the faithful, and its use rapidly became routine.

As coffee gained in popularity, the sixteenth-century Mohammedans found reason to complain. Ironically, they considered coffee to be a threat to religious sobriety, especially upon witnessing that followers were more likely to frequent street side cafes than they were to visit the mosques. Consumption was discouraged, and rumors linking the beverage with impotence, among other "ills," spread wildly. Still, there was no scarcity of coffee drinkers.

In fact, the Arabians guarded their beans with extreme jealousy. All coffee beans designated for export were boiled, destroying their ability to germinate and be domesticated outside the region. Although there is unofficial record that one religious pilgrim smuggled a seedling back to India in the early 1600s and planted it behind his hut in the Mysore area (where a great deal of good coffee has grown since), the commercial production of coffee remained under Arab control through the latter part of the century.

             The Baptism of the Bean

Not long after Venetian traders first presented coffee to Europe in 1615, Pope Clement VIII was warned it might prove threatening to the holy aims of the Church. A legislature of priests accused the beverage of being a tool for the devil, designed to lure good worshippers into losing their souls. Curious, the pope requested that his attendants bring a cup of the stuff to him. He found its aroma pleasing and, upon tasting it, became so enamored with the brew that he decided to get the better of the devil by baptizing it, thereby making coffee a "truly Christian beverage."

The ardently entrepreneurial Dutch orchestrated the first successful planting outside Arabia-on the island of Java-in 1699. An initial trial shipment was sent back to Amsterdam in 1706 and included one seedling, which was planted in the botanical gardens.

When coffee so gained in popularity in Germany that it replaced other breakfast beverages, the eighteenth-century ruler Frederick the Great issued a desperate manifesto. "It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects," he declared, complaining with particular bitterness that the revenues for coffee went to foreign hands while profit from beer came to the crown. "My people," he protested, "must drink beer."

.

         Coffee Crosses the Atlantic

Consumption of coffee in the United States began as early as 1668. The first documented license to sell coffee was obtained by Dorothy Jones of the Massachusetts Colony in 1670. '

The British East India Tea Company harbored plans to develop a profitable market in the colonies.

But the Boston Tea Party, plotted by revolutionaries in Boston's lively Green Dragon coffee house, made drinking coffee a popular form of protest against the iron fist of the monarchy. From that point forward, the more refined beverage of the British crown never regained a substantial foothold.

Today, the United States consumes more coffee than any other nation in the world. Although per capita intake peaked in the 1960s, our national average is again on the rise. Numbers indicate that the fuel behind this, and a parallel increase in Canada, is the emerging specialty coffee segment of the market. Clearly, an emphasis on better coffee is attracting consumers back to it.

                                 World Map of Coffee Growing Regions

                           Coffee Producing Countries: Coffee Harvesting Times and Production

Coffee Producing Country	Coffee Harvesting Time	60 Kg Bags harvested in 1999	60 Kg bags exported
Brazil	March-October	27,170,000	23,135,000
Colombia	October-February and April-June	9,300,000	9,995,000
Costa Rica	Atlantic coast: August-November.  Pacific coast: September-December	2,467,000	2,196,000
Dominican Republic	August-June	1,058,000	161,000
Ecuador	June-October	1,533,000	988,000
Ethiopia	August-January	3,833,000	1,818,000
Guatemala	October-January	4,500,000	4,669,000
Haiti	October-November and February-March	385,000	161,000
Honduras	October-March	3,067,000	1,987,000
Indonesia		7,833,000	5,084,000
Jamaica	August-September	40,000	24,000
Kenya	October-December (main) and June-August	1,433,000	1,113,000
Malawi	December-February	61,000	54,000
Mexico	High Altitudes: November-January.  Low altitudes: August-November	6,193,000	4,358,000
Nicaragua	South: November-January and August-September. North: December-March	1,304,000	983,000
Papua New Guinea	April-September	1,286,000	132,000
Tanzania	October-December	773,000	634,000
Uganda	September-December	4,000,000	3,841,000
Venezuela	September-March	1,073,000	452,000
Zambia	October-March	45,000	54,000
Zimbabwe	July-October	189,000	141,000