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There are different kinds of coffee drinkers around the world, divided
into four distinct groups. The Middle Easterners like their
coffee dark, overbrewed and a tinge bitter, but with much sugar and
sediment. The Latin Americans are the second group who invariably
prefer their brew dark roasted, almost burned and from an Espresso
machine. The English-speaking, North American world
prefers their coffee brown, not black, and without bitterness. It should
be clear and light, without sediment. There is a fourth kind of coffee
drinker who must be mentioned as they are abundant if not elegant. They
are the ones who drink coffee made from powdered bean stirred
into hot water, served in a styrofoam or paper cup, usually with much
cream and sugar added to remove any trace of bitterness or dark color.
Coffee was thought to have originated in Yemen, on the Arabian
peninsula, where Europeans found it growing, but more than likely it
originated on the plateaus of central Ethiopia, where it grows wild to
this day a few thousand feet above sea level. Arabian traders likely
brought it to Yemen where coffea arabica was cultivated from
about 500 A.D. In Arabia, it was first used as a medicine, then as a
drink associated with religious exercises. Then the people of the
street discovered coffee and with it came the coffee house. When
visitors from around the known world tasted it in the coffee houses of
Mecca and Cairo, it spread rapidly because of its hardy nature. Coffee
pollinates itself. This means that mutations have less chance of
occurring, the differences in various growths of the cherished product
being caused not by the plants themselves, but by the soil, moisture,
acidity and climate of the environment.
The original owners were always jealous of their treasured commodity.
The Arabs refused to allow the seed to leave their country by
insisting that all beans be dehydrated or boiled. It wasn't long before
Baba Budan, an Indian Moslem pilgrim procured seven seeds which he is
alleged to have hidden under his cloak, bound to his stomach. Once
home, he planted them in southern India where they flourished. They
quickly spread throughout India. When visiting Frenchmen attempted to
transfer the seed to southern France, near Dijon, their failure was
caused by frost which the plant cannot tolerate. It was the Dutch who
transported the plant to Java where they soon established coffee
growing. Coffee was then available either from Mocha (the primary port of
Yemen) or from Java, giving rise to to the Mocha-Java blend.
The next chapter in the spread of the black treasure was when Louis XIV
of France arranged for a Dutch tree to be brought to Paris where his
gardeners protected it in the first ever European greenhouse. It was
1715 and the flowering of the tree was successful. Five years later,
sprouts were stolen by one Mathiew de Clieu and made their way to
Martinique where they once again flourished, from which coffee
cultivation was transferred to Haiti, Mexico, and many Caribbean
islands. In 1727, De Melho Palheta was sent to French Guiana by the
emperor of Brazil. Despite the traditional jealous guarding of the
black fruit, some seeds were acquired from the wife of the Governor of
French Guiana and were used to establish the billion-dollar industry of
Brazil. At last in 1893, coffee seed from Brazil was brought to Kenya
and Tanganyika, a few hundred miles south of its original home in
Ethiopia, ending a centuries long circumnavigation of the earth.
15hqqx.
