THE HISTORY OF COFFEE

Several legends exist explaining the discovery of coffee. One tells of a ruler who saved himself from starvation by eating coffee berries. Another says that the Angel Gabriel brought the berries to the Prophet Mohammed to help him stay awake for an impending battle. But the most accepted legend is the story of a goat herder named Kaldi. So the story begins …

850 A.D.
A goat herder named Kaldi was one day out in the pasture when his goats ate red berries off a tree and started prancing around. Kaldi tried a few with similar results. A holy man named Chandely was passing by and observed Kaldi’s behavior. He took some of the berries and crushed them into powder, poured hot water on the mix and realized it invigorated him. Soon all the mosques in the region were using this brew to help keep the holy men awake during prayers.

1200
Up to this point, coffee had not been roasted. Roasting began around 1200A.D., some believe accidentally as a result of a house fire. By the end of the 13th century, coffee was enjoyed all over the Middle East, but not filtered — brew and grounds were both consumed.

1350
Coffee grew wild in Ethiopia, but it was first cultivated in Yemen around 1350 A.D. and from then on was seen as a cash crop. Ethiopia and Yemen had a law forbidding the plants or the seeds to leave the country; therefore, no coffee was grown outside Ethiopia or Yemen until around 1600.

1400
From 800 A.D. to 1400 A.D., coffee became a very popular item throughout the Middle East. Some marriage contracts even stipulated that a husband had to supply his wife with an adequate allotment of coffee per month.

Early 1500s
Several times during this period coffee was outlawed for the masses but consistently available for the elite. All of the edicts were short-lived as the popularity of coffee continued.

Late 1500s
Europe was introduced to coffee in the late 1500s by Venetian travelers. Priests tried to get coffee banned for Catholics by Pope Clement VIII because it was so popular in the Muslim world. They thought that since Muslims did not drink wine (a holy sacrament), the devil must have given them this devilish brew. For Christians to drink it was to risk the devil’s trap. Curious, the good Pope wanted to examine this “devil’s brew” and had some brought to him. At first he just smelled it, but then to the horror of the priests, he drank some. The priests thought he might die or turn into the devil. Instead he declared it delicious and baptized it, thus snatching it away from the devil’s grasp and opening up the coffee trade to Europe.

1600
Coffee came to the Far East via Baba Budan sometime around 1600 A.D. in India. Baba (a holy man) rallied the faithful, both Muslim and Hindu, in front of a cave and told them he was going to take a mystical tour to Mecca for guidance. For months the faithful waited outside the cave and one day Baba reappeared and said the gods had given him seven seeds that would provide them with both food and drink. The seeds were planted in the Chandragiri hills, which have since become known as the Baba Budan hills. What Baba failed to tell the faithful was that he had slipped out the back way of the cave and made a trip to Yemen where he stole some coffee seeds and with seven of them “strapped to his belly,” made his way back to India. These same trees then provided coffee seeds to Java and the rest of the countries in the Far East.

1645
The first coffeehouse in Italy opened in 1645. These first coffeehouses became known as Caffés, thus the origins of the word café. They were denounced as houses of vice, immorality and corruption.

1650
The first coffeehouse in England opened in Oxford in 1650 — the students loved the coffee because it helped them stay alert for their studies. The first coffeehouse in London opened in 1652 in St. Michael’s Alley, opposite the church. By 1700, there were more than two thousand coffee houses in London. But ultimately, gentry with investments in the tea fields in the Far East wanted to promote tea and discourage coffee consumption. This was done by several means, most notably by taxing coffee heavily. Therefore, coffee became expensive, tea became cheap and England went on to become a tea-drinking nation.

1670
The earliest record we have of coffee in the United States is in 1670. Tea was still the predominate drink, but that all changed in 1773 with the “Boston Tea Party.” The first license to sell coffee was issued to Dorothy Jones in Boston in 1670, but no mention is made of her opening a coffeehouse. The first coffee house was likely the London House, which opened in Boston in 1689; the second was the Gutteridge, which opened in 1691 in Boston. The most famous coffee house in all of the Americas was Boston’s Green Dragon, which opened in 1697. All the major players of the revolution met there and plotted their strategy. That was the spot where the “Boston Tea Party” was planned and where Paul Revere planned his midnight ride.

1672
The first coffeehouse in France opened in Paris and was soon used by everyone from the lowest of citizens to the King himself. The French revolution had its beginnings in the coffeehouses of Paris. King Louis XIV, Emperor of France, wanted some coffee plants for his garden. To house them, he built the first greenhouse ever constructed after the Dutch agreed to give him a few as a gift, which they would come to regret.

1696
The first coffeehouse opened in New York in 1696 on Broadway and was named the “Kings Arms.”

1700
Coffee came to Vienna after the Austrians defeated the Turks in 1683. Following the battle, legend has it that the hero of the war, Franz Kolschitzky was with some soldiers sharing some of the spoils of war the Turks had left behind. Kolschitzky requested the sacks of coffee beans, which no one else wanted. He roasted them and began to peddle brewed coffee door to door; its popularity spreading rapidly. The first coffee house in Vienna appeared in 1700 and some say it was Kolschitzky himself who started it, however this has never been confirmed.

1723
A sea captain by the name of Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu thought if he could get one of the coffee plants from King Louis XIV, it would grow very well in the New World. He was having a tryst with a lady of the court (some say the queen herself) and persuaded her to help him steal a coffee plant. Legend has it that the coffee plant was passed over the garden wall at midnight and he set sail the next morning with his contraband. After a long trip filled with obstacles, he arrived in Martinique and planted the coffee. Fifty years later, there were 18 million coffee trees on the island.

1727
Coffee came to Brazil in 1727 when a Colonel Francisco de Melo Palheta was sent to mediate a dispute between the Dutch and French on French Guiana. He had a tryst with the governor’s wife and whispered in her ear that the Brazilian Emperor wanted some coffee seeds. On his departure, the governor’s wife presented the Colonel, right in front of her husband, a bouquet of flowers with hidden coffee seeds. Brazil soon became the largest coffee producer.

1865
John Arbuckle was the first to start selling roasted coffee as a pre-packaged product in the U.S. He called it Arbuckle’s Ariosa Blend and in a short period of time, it became known as “the coffee that won the west”. The Ariosa Blend was made with an egg and sugar glaze. Each package came with a peppermint stick for the children and eventually points that could be redeemed for products in the Arbuckle gift catalog. By 1901, one fifth of the coffee being roasted in the United States was being done by the Arbuckle Company.

Late 1800s
The current custom of tasting (cupping) coffee before it is purchased started with the Hills Brothers in the latter part of the nineteenth century. They were purchasing coffee off the docks in San Francisco, then roasting and selling it. Sometimes after they roasted it, they did not like the taste and decided to go to the docks and get a sample of a certain lot, roast and taste before making a decision about purchasing it. The Hills Brothers were also the first company to vacuum pack coffee.

1901
Instant coffee was invented by Santo Kato, a Japanese-American in Chicago in 1901. Sanka (sans caffeine) was developed two years later in Germany.

1900-1960
Up until 1900 in the United States, coffee was a pretty good brew, but several things caused it to become a poor-tasting canned product during the next 60 years: the discovery of a different species of coffee in 1898 in the Belgian Congo called “Robusta”, two world wars that cut supplies, a worldwide depression that caused coffee companies to use cheaper grades so they would still have a market and the forming of multi-national companies and stockholders.

1966
Alfred Peet emigrated from Holland in 1955 and settled in San Francisco, CA. He opened Peet’s Coffeehouse across the bay in Berkeley in April 1966 on the premise of buying better coffee and selling it fresh (he roasted right on site). This marks the reemergence of specialty coffee in the United States.

1971
Starbucks was started in 1971 in Seattle by three academics, Jerry Baldwin (an English teacher), Zev Siegel (a history teacher) and Gordon Bowker (a writer). The name Starbucks came from the first mate in the novel Moby Dick, which the three academics thought evoked the romance of the high sea. The three learned the coffee business from Alfred Peet, and for the first year he roasted all their coffee. Starbucks did not become a mega company until Howard Schultz bought it in 1987.

1982
In 1982, a small group of coffee professionals formed the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) to set quality standards for the specialty coffee trade.

1993
On Nov. 4, Danny O’Neill started The Roasterie, Inc. in the basement of his home in the Kansas City neighborhood, Brookside.