Beer is the oldest man made drink, and wine is in second place. You can find beer recipes dating back to 6000BC, and even wine making has been going on for a millennium. Although we may take for granted the coffee that comes out of our home coffee makers, coffee took a few hundred more years to be developed. The plant itself however is much older than that.
Some evidence has shown that people have eaten coffee beans for over a hundred thousand years however it took much longer for someone to make it into a drink. One legend suggests that a goat herder once ate red berries from a coffee tree and noticed himself getting excited. He claimed to feel a lift when eating the berries. By 600AD coffee as we know it today was a very popular drink. A native Indian smuggled coffee seeds out of Arabia in around 1650AD and planted them in India. Arabia tried to prevent exporting the beans while they could still be germinated in order to control the coffee industry.
Coffee is now very important for India's economy. The Europeans spread all of the beans to the other countries when they were travelling about. The Dutch introduced coffee to Java in around the 18th century. These are the trees where one was given to the king of France as a precious gift. Lois XIV discovered that the tree was not frost hardy and so built a greenhouse in order to make sure he could still get the delicious beans to make his favorite drink. Coffee trees were planted along the Caribbean region and grew very well.
Thousands of trees reached these areas due to the hot climate. Some of these trees were planted in Mexico, coffee is now Mexico's largest export. At around the same time coffee found itself being planted in the French Guiana which grew very well as it is a warm atmosphere. A very sneaky man known as Francisco de Melo Palheta smuggled some of the beans out of the country and into Brazil in a bunch of flowers which were handed to him by a lady. As a result of this Brazil now exports more coffee than anyone else on the planet! The beans then continued their journey around the rest of the globe reaching Kenya in the 19th century which isn't very far away from their home in Ethiopia.
It took them six centuries to get back home, so there you go coffee is extremely well travelled! Why not sit down and ponder that with a lovely cup of coffee?.
Ken Morris usually publishes online reports on news about quality coffee makers. On his site you can see his articles on coffe makers and brewmaster coffee maker.
