Image by Doruk Golcu

The time around 850 AD marks the discovery of the first coffee berries. The goat-herd Kaldi, member of the Galla tribe of Ethiopia noticed that his goats displayed some excitement after eating red berries from a local shrub. He ate the berries himself and frolicked with the goats. The tribe ground berries with animal fat and ate them.

1100 AD: Arab traders bring coffee to their homeland and cultivate for the first time. They are the first to boil the beans, and they create a drink called qahwa—that which prevents sleep.

1453: Coffee travels to Mecca and Medina. The Ottoman Turks bring coffee to Constantinople.

1475: The Turks open the world’s first coffee shop. Turkish law makes it legal for a woman to divorce her husband if he fails to provide her with her daily quota of coffee.

1600: Coffee is smuggled into southern India by a Muslim pilgrim named Baba Budan, who carries beans under his belly.

1616: Coffee enters Holland from the Arabian port of Mocha.

1645: The Italian traders transport coffee from Constantinople to Venice. The Pope is urged by his advisers to consider this Ottoman drink to be an infidel threat. Still, coffee becomes an acceptable drink.

1652: The first coffeehouse opens in England. They multiply and become popular forums for learned and not-so-learned discussions, called “penny universities,” —one pays a penny for a cup of coffee.

1668: Coffee comes to North America. It replaces beer as New York City’s breakfast drink.

1669: Coffee travels to Paris through a Turkish ambassador, to the court of Louis XIV.

1670: Coffee is introduced in Germany.

1675: King Charles II orders the closing of all London coffeehouses, calling them places of sedition.

1679: The physicians of Marseilles attempt to discredit coffee by claiming it to be harmful to health.

1683: Franz Georg Kolschitzky opens the first coffee house in Vienna using the “dry black fodder,” left behind by the defeated, fleeing Turks. He establishes the process of refining the brew by filtering out the grounds, sweetening it, and adding a dash of milk.

1688: Edward Lloyd’s coffeehouse opens in England, which becomes the Lloyd’s of London. The word “TIPS” is coined in an English coffee house: A sign reading “To Insure Prompt Service” (TIPS) is placed by a cup. To get prompt service and better seating, one has to throw a coin into the cup.

1690: The Dutch transport coffee from Mocha for cultivation in Ceylon and Java.

1713: The Dutch present a coffee shrub to Louis XIV, which is preserved in the Jardin Des Plantes in Paris. Sugar is first used as an additive in his court.

1723: Coffee plants are introduced in the Americas by Gabriel DeClieu, a French naval officer, who transports a seedling from Paris to Martinique.

1727: The Brazilian coffee industry gets its start by Lieutenant Colonel Francisco de Melo Palheta, who is sent to arbitrate a border dispute between the French and the Dutch colonies in French Guiana. He settles the dispute and strikes up a secret liaison with the wife of the governor, transferring cuttings and fertile seeds of coffee in a bouquet of flowers. In less than a century, Brazil harvests 97% of the world’s coffee.

1730: The English begin coffee cultivation in Jamaica.

1732: Johann Sebastian Bach composes Kaffee-Kantate. It is partly an ode to coffee and partly a stab at the movement in Germany to prevent women from drinking coffee.

1773: The Boston Tea Party makes drinking coffee a patriotic duty in America.

1885: The process of using natural gas and hot air becomes the popular method of roasting coffee.

1900: Kaffeeklatsch, the afternoon coffee, becomes popular in Germany. The name was coined to describe women’s gossip at these affairs. Since then, it is broadened to mean a general, relaxed conversation. In the same year, Hills Bros. begin packing roast coffee in vacuum tins.

1901: The first soluble “instant” coffee is invented by Japanese-American chemist Satori Kato in Chicago.

1903: The German researchers perfect the process of removing caffeine from the beans without destroying the flavor, and market it with the brand name Sanka.

1905: The first commercial espresso machine is manufactured in Italy.

1906: Brazil attempts to increase world coffee prices by withholding some from the market through the “Valorization of Coffee.”

1908: The world’s first drip coffeemaker is invented.

1938: Nestle invents freeze-dried “Nescafé instant coffee,” assisting the Brazilian government in solving their coffee surplus problem.

1942: American soldiers are issued instant Maxwell House coffee in their ration kits. They bring instant coffee to a global audience.

1945: Achilles Gaggia perfects the espresso machine with a piston that creates a high pressure to produce a thick layer of cream. Cappuccino is named for the resemblance of its color to the robes of the monks of the Capuchin order.

1959: Juan Valdez becomes the face of Colombian Coffee.

1971: The first Starbucks opens in Seattle.

1975: Brazil suffers a severe frost that sends coffee prices skyrocketing.

Early1990s: Organic coffee becomes the fastest growing segment of the specialty coffee industry in the United States.

The twenty-fist century: Coffee is the world’s most popular beverage. It is a world commodity that is second only to oil.

References:

¹ http://www.nationalgeographic.com/coffee/ax/frame.html

² http://www.coffeeresearch.org/coffee/history.htm

³ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coffee

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