A Very Short History of Coffee

Coffee was discovered growing in Ethiopia about 1500 years ago, where it was known as kaffa. Arabian traders called it qawah, and decided it was a good commodity to trade. They established the port of Mocha on the Arabian peninsula and it soon became the top coffee port in the world. That gave us a synonym for coffee, as well. It wasn't difficult for Mocha to become the top coffee-trading port, because these Arabian traders had a monopoly on the beans. The beans they exported were infertile ones – they wouldn't sprout, so it wasn't possible for someone receiving the beans to take one and plant it and grow their own coffee plants.

However, human ingenuity and cunning being what they are, it wasn't that much longer before some adventurous and enterprising soul managed to smuggle out some fertile beans, and then coffee-growing began to spread.

The Dutch took coffee beans to Java – source of another synonym for the stuff. The British took it to Jamaica , and if you can once in a blue moon afford a pound or so of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, you'll thank them for it!

The only American-grown coffee is from the Kona coast of the big island of Hawaii , and it is some of the best!

During World War II, coffee was rationed, and coffee-loving Americans on the home front got inventive, roasting the root of the chicory plant to make what they called “ersatz” coffee.

Nowadays, the varieties of coffee available are nearly unlimited.