Coffee:

What is it?, history, cultivation, nutritional value, uses, recipes, and more...

The history of coffee’s origin begins in Ethiopia, likely in the Kaffa province. There’s a legend that tells of a young shepherd and poet named Kaldi in Ethiopia who observed the energizing effect on his goats after they consumed coffee cherries, and he tried it himself. Kaldi took the fruit to a nearby monastery, where the monks turned it into a beverage, using it as a stimulant to stay awake during nighttime religious services.

Another widely spread theory asserts that the ancestors of the Oromo people were the first to recognize the energizing effect of coffee by mixing ground coffee beans with fat, forming balls to use as rations on warrior expeditions.

There are no conclusive archaeological records that allow us to affirm coffee’s use or knowledge before the 15th century, and it’s speculated that its discovery might have been delayed due to the long and complex process required to bring out its virtues. However, what is clear is that the first mention of coffee use was written by Abd Al-Qadir al-Jaziri in the 1550s, who claimed to drink qahwa, the Arabic term for coffee, which means “invigorating.” In his manuscript, he narrates that coffee was brought from Ethiopia to Yemen around the mid-15th century, where Sufis used it to stay awake during their prayers.

More distinctly, it is known that slaves transported from what is now Sudan to Yemen and Arabia through the major port of the time, Mocha (which also became a term for a type of coffee and coffee bean), consumed the fleshy part of the coffee cherry. This leaves no doubt that coffee was already being cultivated in Yemen by the 15th century.

The Arabs had a strict policy of not exporting fertile coffee beans to prevent cultivation in other places. Although many tried to secretly take coffee plants or fertile beans, the Dutch were the first to successfully bring some to Holland in 1616, where they were cultivated in greenhouses.

Initially, Yemen’s authorities encouraged coffee consumption as its effects were considered preferable to “kat,” a shrub whose leaves and shoots were chewed as a stimulant. The first coffee-serving establishments, known as “kaveh kanes,” opened in Mecca. This type of business spread rapidly throughout the Arab world, becoming pleasant meeting places where people enjoyed singing, dancing, and music in a comfortable, luxurious setting, accessible to all for the price of a cup of coffee.

However, shortly afterward, these establishments became centers of political activity and were prohibited by authorities. It was believed that coffee consumption developed critical thinking, facilitating dangerous intellectual exchanges among consumers. In the following decades, coffee and its establishments were suppressed many times but kept reappearing. The ultimate solution came later: coffee and its establishments would be taxed.

The first to bring coffee to Europe were Venetian traders in 1615. At the time, Pope Clement VIII was advised to ban coffee due to it being perceived as a threat from infidels. However, after trying it, the Pope baptized the new beverage, declaring that leaving the pleasure of this drink exclusively to infidels would be a pity. Monks embraced coffee because it allowed them to stay awake for long periods and, they claimed, kept the spirit pure. During that period, two other well-known hot beverages also appeared in Europe: hot chocolate, brought by the Spanish from the Americas to Spain in 1528, and tea, first sold in Europe in 1610.

Initially, coffee was mainly sold by lemonade vendors, and it was believed to have medicinal qualities. The first coffeehouse in Europe opened in Venice in 1683, known as the famous Caffè Florian on St. Mark’s Square, which opened its doors in 1720 and continues to operate today.

By the mid-18th century, coffeehouses existed in all European cities, and in 1734, Johann Sebastian Bach composed his famous “Coffee Cantata,” in which a girl asks her father not to punish her by prohibiting coffee and states that her future husband should allow her to drink it.

In Russia, initial acceptance was difficult, and coffee was banned under penalties of torture and mutilation. Additionally, when the czarist police encountered someone with a nervous crisis, they attributed it to coffee.

The first record of coffee in America dates back to 1668, in North America. Shortly after that, coffeehouses opened in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and other cities. Interestingly, in the U.S., coffee gained popularity and became the national drink after rebels threw the taxed tea into the sea during the Boston Tea Party of 1773, organized in a coffeehouse, the Green Dragon. Both the New York Stock Exchange and the Bank of New York began in coffeehouses, in what now belongs to the financial district of Wall Street.

Around 1720, coffee was first cultivated in the Americas by French naval officer Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu. He managed to conceal a coffee plant cutting that had been offered by the Dutch to King Louis XIV of France and was kept in royal greenhouses. After a series of adventures, he brought a cutting to the island of Martinique in the Caribbean, where the coffee plant grew, multiplied, and produced its first harvest in 1726. It’s recorded that by 1777, there were between 18 and 19 million coffee plants in Martinique. This established the model for a new commercial crop that could thrive in the New World.

However, it was the Dutch who spread the coffee plant in Central and South America, where it is now one of the main commercial crops on the continent. Coffee first reached the Dutch colony of Surinam in 1718, and coffee plantations were established in French Guiana and Pará, Brazil. In 1730, the British brought coffee to Jamaica, where the world’s most famous and expensive coffee, the Blue Mountain coffee, is grown today. In 1784, Capuchin missionaries brought the first coffee seeds to Venezuela from Brazil, while coffee arrived in Colombia from the French Antilles.

Colombia and Peru have a significant number of high-quality organic coffee plantations that are gaining global recognition. For several decades in the 19th and 20th centuries, Brazil was the largest coffee producer in the trade, until a policy of maintaining high prices created business opportunities for other producers like Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Indonesia, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela.

Today, you can find coffee on any street in the United States (the largest consumers worldwide) and much of the rest of the world. Coffee is one of the most valuable primary products. Its cultivation, processing, trade, transport, and marketing provide employment to millions of people globally and are of crucial importance to the economies and politics of many developing countries.

By the mid-18th century, coffee was already being produced in Chanchamayo, Moyobamba, San Ignacio, Jaén, Huánuco, and Cusco for local consumption and for export to Germany, Chile, and Great Britain. The first café in Lima opened in 1771 on Santo Domingo Street by Francisco Serio.

Peruvian varieties include Good Hard Bean (Central Jungle), Hard Bean (Northeastern Jungle), and Medium Hard Bean (Southeastern). Among them, the first fetches the best prices.