The History of Coffee: From an Ethiopian Legend to Your Morning Cup

Every cup of coffee you drink carries centuries of history. Before it reached your mug, the humble coffee bean traveled from wild forests in the highlands of Ethiopia to Sufi monasteries in Yemen, from Ottoman coffee houses to the cafés of Venice, London, Paris and Vienna, from Dutch plantations on Java to the vast farms of Brazil, and from the first espresso machine in Turin to today's specialty coffee shops and fresh roasted coffee delivered to your door.

In this complete guide to the history of coffee, you will discover where coffee comes from, who discovered coffee, how coffee beans conquered the world, why we call coffee “java” and “mocha”, and how espresso, instant coffee, decaf, the French press and cold brew were invented. You will also find a full coffee history timeline, fun coffee facts and answers to the most common questions about the origin of coffee. Pour yourself a fresh cup and enjoy the journey.

In this article:

1. Coffee history at a glance
2. Where does coffee come from?
3. The legend of Kaldi and the dancing goats
4. Ethiopia: the birthplace of coffee
5. Yemen, the Sufis and the port of Mocha
6. Coffee conquers the Islamic world
7. Coffee arrives in Europe
8. The coffee house revolution
9. How coffee spread around the world
10. Coffee in Latin America and Hawaii
11. Coffee in the United States
12. Coffee in Asia
13. Coffee in Africa beyond Ethiopia
14. Arabica vs Robusta
15. Caffeine, roasting and the science of coffee
16. The history of coffee brewing methods
17. The birth of espresso
18. Instant coffee, decaf and the coffee boom
19. The three waves of coffee
20. Modern coffee trends
21. Coffee today in numbers
22. Coffee history timeline
23. Fun facts about coffee history
24. What coffee history means for your cup
25. Coffee history FAQ

Coffee history at a glance

• Birthplace of coffee: the highland forests of southwestern Ethiopia, where Arabica coffee still grows wild.
• First coffee drinkers: Sufi communities in Yemen, in the 15th century.
• Origin of the word “coffee”: the Arabic qahwa, which became kahve in Turkish and koffie in Dutch before reaching English around 1600.
• First coffee houses: Mecca, Cairo and Istanbul in the 1500s; Venice, Oxford, London, Paris and Vienna in the 1600s.
• Largest coffee producer today: Brazil, followed by Vietnam, Colombia, Indonesia and Ethiopia.
• Two main coffee species: Arabica (sweet and aromatic) and Robusta (strong, with more caffeine).
• Coffee consumption: more than two billion cups of coffee are enjoyed around the world every day.

Where does coffee come from?

Coffee is not really a bean. What we call a coffee bean is the seed of a small red fruit, the coffee cherry, which grows on an evergreen shrub of the genus Coffea. Botanists have described more than 100 species of coffee plants, but almost all the coffee we drink comes from just two: Coffea arabica (Arabica coffee) and Coffea canephora (better known as Robusta coffee).

Arabica, the most prized coffee species, was born in East Africa. It is a natural hybrid of two other wild species, Coffea canephora and Coffea eugenioides, and it still grows wild in the shady mountain forests of southwestern Ethiopia and on the nearby Boma Plateau of South Sudan. This is why Ethiopia is called the birthplace of coffee.

Each coffee cherry usually holds two seeds facing each other on their flat sides. In a small share of cherries, only one round seed develops: coffee lovers call it a peaberry. Once harvested, the seeds are separated from the fruit, dried, sorted and shipped as green coffee. Only roasting turns them into the brown, aromatic coffee beans we know.

Today coffee grows in more than 70 countries, almost all of them inside the coffee belt, the tropical band of the planet between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. High altitude, rich volcanic soil, steady rainfall and mild temperatures produce the best coffee, which is why the most famous coffees come from mountains: the Ethiopian highlands, the Andes, the volcanoes of Central America and the islands of Indonesia.

The legend of Kaldi and the dancing goats

The most famous coffee origin story is the legend of Kaldi, a young goat herder in the Ethiopian highlands. One day, Kaldi noticed that his goats were unusually lively, almost dancing, after nibbling the bright red berries of a shrub. Curious, he tasted the berries himself and felt a new burst of energy.

Kaldi brought the berries to a nearby monastery. In one version of the story, a disapproving monk called them “the devil's work” and threw them into the fire. Soon a wonderful aroma filled the room: the world's first coffee roast. The monks raked the roasted beans out of the embers, crushed them and dissolved them in hot water, creating the first cup of coffee. In another version, the monks simply brewed the berries and discovered that the drink kept them awake during long night prayers.

The story is often set around the 9th century, but its earliest known written version appeared much later, in a Latin treatise on coffee published in Rome in 1671 by the scholar Antoine Faustus Nairon. In that first version, the herder had no name and lived in Arabia; the name Kaldi and the Ethiopian setting were added by later storytellers. Historians consider Kaldi a legend rather than a real person, but his dancing goats remain the most charming answer to the question “who discovered coffee?”

Other legends exist too. In Yemen, people told the story of Sheikh Omar, a holy man exiled to a desert cave who survived by boiling coffee berries, then used the drink to heal the sick and was welcomed home as a saint. Some scholars also believe that the 10th-century Persian physician al-Razi described coffee under the name bunchum, but this remains debated. What is certain is that the coffee plant comes from Ethiopia, and that coffee as a drink first appears in the historical record in Yemen.

Ethiopia: the birthplace of coffee

Long before coffee was a hot drink, it was food. According to tradition, people in Ethiopia's highlands, including the Oromo, crushed coffee cherries and mixed them with butter or animal fat to make energy balls for long journeys. In the Harar region, coffee leaves were brewed into a tea called kuti. These are some of the oldest ways of enjoying the coffee plant.

Coffee is still at the heart of Ethiopian life. An Amharic saying goes “Buna dabo naw”: “coffee is our bread.” Ethiopians drink roughly half of the coffee their country grows, and the traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony, or buna, is a ritual of friendship and respect:

• Green coffee beans are washed, then roasted in a flat pan over charcoal, and the smoking pan is passed around so guests can enjoy the aroma.
• The roasted beans are ground by hand with a mortar and pestle.
• The coffee is brewed in a round clay pot with a long neck called a jebena, while frankincense burns nearby.
• It is served in small handleless cups, often with sugar, sometimes with salt or butter, and with snacks such as popcorn.
• Guests traditionally drink three rounds: abol, tona and baraka. The third round is said to bring a blessing.

Today Ethiopia is Africa's largest coffee producer and one of the five biggest coffee producing countries in the world. Its forests hold thousands of indigenous coffee varieties, often called “heirloom” coffees, which give Ethiopian coffee its famous floral and fruity flavors: jasmine, bergamot, lemon, peach and blueberry. Legendary coffee regions include Yirgacheffe, Sidama, Guji, Harrar, Limu and Jimma.

Ethiopia also gave the world the oldest coffee processing method: the natural or dry process, in which whole coffee cherries dry in the sun before the beans are removed. It gives a sweet, fruity, almost wine-like cup. You can taste this ancient tradition in our Ethiopia Natural single origin coffee.

Yemen, the Sufis and the port of Mocha

If Ethiopia is the birthplace of the coffee plant, Yemen is the birthplace of coffee as a drink. Just across the Red Sea, the earliest reliable evidence of coffee drinking dates from the 15th century, in the Sufi monasteries of Yemen. Sufi mystics drank a dark brew they called qahwa to stay awake and focused during their night prayers and chanting. A Sufi scholar from Aden, Muhammad al-Dhabhani, who died around 1470, is often credited with bringing the habit over from Ethiopia.

The word qahwa is the root of almost every word for coffee on the planet. It became kahve in Turkish, koffie in Dutch, café in French, caffè in Italian and coffee in English around 1600. Interestingly, qahwa was also an old Arabic word for wine, and Europeans later nicknamed coffee “the wine of Arabia.”

Yemen was also the first country to cultivate coffee as a crop, on terraced mountain farms that still exist today. For about two centuries, much of the world's coffee left from one harbor on the Red Sea: Mocha (al-Mukha). The name became so linked to coffee that “mocha” is still used today. Yemeni coffee often had natural chocolatey notes, which is one reason why a café mocha now means coffee with chocolate, like our Mocha flavored coffee.

Traders later combined Yemen's Mocha coffee with coffee from the island of Java to create Mocha-Java, often called the oldest coffee blend in the world. Blending coffees from different origins is still an art today (read our guide Single Origin vs Blend Coffee).

Yemen guarded its coffee monopoly closely. It is often said that coffee beans were boiled or parched before export so that no one could plant them elsewhere. Of course, the secret could not be kept forever.

Coffee conquers the Islamic world: Mecca, Cairo and Istanbul

By the early 1500s, coffee had spread with pilgrims, students and merchants to Mecca and Medina, to Cairo, where students of Al-Azhar drank it during long nights of study, and on to Damascus, Aleppo and Baghdad. A new kind of meeting place was born: the coffee house (qahveh khaneh). People came to talk, listen to music and storytellers, play chess and backgammon, and discuss the news of the day.

Not everyone liked it. In 1511, Khair Beg, the governor of Mecca, banned coffee and closed the coffee houses, worried that they encouraged dangerous gatherings. The ban did not last: the sultan in Cairo soon reversed it. This was the first of many attempts to ban coffee in history, and all of them failed.

In the mid-1550s, two merchants from Aleppo and Damascus opened some of the first coffee houses in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire. Coffee houses multiplied so quickly that people called them “schools of the wise.” The Ottoman palace even had its own chief coffee maker, the kahvecibaşı. Later, Sultan Murad IV, who ruled from 1623 to 1640, tried to stamp out coffee with harsh punishments, but Istanbul's love of coffee won again.

The Ottomans perfected Turkish coffee: coffee ground into a fine powder, simmered with water and sugar in a small long-handled pot called a cezve (or ibrik), and served unfiltered with a thick foam on top. After drinking, some people turn the cup over to read the future in the grounds. In 2013, UNESCO added Turkish coffee culture and tradition to its list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, and a Turkish proverb still says: “A cup of coffee commits one to forty years of friendship.”

In the Arabian Peninsula, Arabic coffee developed its own style: lightly roasted beans, often spiced with cardamom, served in tiny cups with dates as a sign of hospitality. UNESCO recognized Arabic coffee as a symbol of generosity in 2015.

Coffee arrives in Europe

European travelers to the Middle East were fascinated by the black drink. In 1582, the German physician Leonhard Rauwolf published one of the first European descriptions of coffee after his travels in the Ottoman world. But it was trade that really brought coffee to Europe, and the first great European coffee port was Venice, whose merchants traded constantly with the Ottoman Empire.

In the early 1600s, coffee was sold in Venice as an exotic medicine, but it quickly became a pleasure. According to a famous legend, some priests asked Pope Clement VIII (pope from 1592 to 1605) to condemn this foreign drink. The pope tasted it, loved it, and decided it was far too delicious to forbid, so he blessed or “baptized” coffee instead. True or not, coffee soon spread across Italy. Venice's Caffè Florian, opened in 1720 on Piazza San Marco, is still serving coffee today and is one of the oldest cafés in the world.

The Dutch, English and French East India companies also began importing coffee from Mocha in the 17th century, and coffee became one of the most exciting new products in European markets, alongside tea, chocolate, sugar and tobacco.

The coffee house revolution: London, Paris, Vienna and Leipzig

England: the penny universities

England's first coffee house opened in Oxford around 1650, and in 1652 Pasqua Rosée, the servant of an English merchant who traded in the Levant, opened the first coffee house in London, in St Michael's Alley. Within a few decades, London had hundreds of coffee houses. For the price of a penny, anyone could buy a cup of coffee and join the conversation, which is why coffee houses were nicknamed “penny universities.”

Each coffee house had its own crowd: merchants, writers, scientists, politicians. Members of the Royal Society, including Isaac Newton, met in coffee houses. Ship owners and insurers gathered at Edward Lloyd's coffee house in the late 1680s, which grew into Lloyd's of London, the world's most famous insurance market. Brokers trading at Jonathan's Coffee House laid the groundwork for the London Stock Exchange. Modern business, journalism and banking were partly born over cups of coffee.

Not everyone was happy. In 1674, a satirical pamphlet called The Women's Petition Against Coffee complained that men spent all their time in coffee houses. In December 1675, King Charles II, who feared that coffee houses spread criticism of his government, ordered them closed. The public outcry was so strong that the order was withdrawn within days. In the 18th century, tea gradually replaced coffee as Britain's favorite drink, but the coffee house had already changed English society.

France: from the Sun King to the Revolution

Coffee became fashionable in Paris in 1669, when Suleiman Agha, the envoy of the Ottoman sultan, served it at lavish receptions for the court of Louis XIV. In 1686, the Sicilian Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli opened Café Procope, an elegant café with mirrors and chandeliers. It became a meeting place for writers and thinkers such as Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot, and later for Benjamin Franklin and the leaders of the French Revolution. Café Procope still exists today as one of the oldest cafés in Paris.

Paris cafés were where the Enlightenment debated new ideas, and on July 12, 1789, the journalist Camille Desmoulins jumped on a table at the Café de Foy to call Parisians to arms, two days before the storming of the Bastille. Later, the cafés of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, like the Café de Flore and Les Deux Magots, welcomed artists and writers from Picasso to Hemingway, Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. The French also gave the world café au lait and the habit of coffee with breakfast.

Vienna: the city of coffee houses

In 1683, the Ottoman army besieged Vienna and was defeated, leaving behind supplies that, according to legend, included sacks of coffee beans. The legend says that a soldier and spy named Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki used them to open the city's first coffee house. Historically, the first official coffee house license in Vienna was granted in 1685 to an Armenian merchant, Johannes Diodato.

The Viennese coffee house became an institution: marble tables, newspapers on wooden holders, a glass of water served with every coffee, and the right to stay for hours. Vienna created its own coffee drinks, such as the Melange (similar to a cappuccino), the Einspänner topped with whipped cream, and the Kapuziner, an ancestor of the cappuccino. In 2011, Viennese coffee house culture was listed as intangible cultural heritage in Austria.

Germany and Scandinavia: coffee against the rules

In Leipzig, Johann Sebastian Bach composed the Coffee Cantata (around 1732–1735) for performances at Zimmermann's coffee house. It tells the comic story of a father who tries to stop his daughter from drinking coffee, while she sings that coffee is sweeter than a thousand kisses. In 1777, Frederick the Great of Prussia complained that too much money left the country for coffee and encouraged his people to drink beer instead. A few years later, coffee roasting became a royal monopoly, and veterans nicknamed “coffee sniffers” patrolled the streets to smell out illegal roasting.

Sweden banned coffee several times between 1756 and 1823. A popular legend says that King Gustav III even ordered an experiment on twin prisoners, one condemned to drink coffee and the other tea every day, to prove that coffee was harmful. The doctors supervising the test died first, and the coffee drinker outlived everyone. Today, the Nordic countries drink more coffee per person than anywhere else, and Swedes take a daily coffee break called fika.

How coffee spread around the world

As demand for coffee exploded in Europe, every colonial power wanted to grow it. The history of coffee cultivation is full of smuggled seeds, stolen seedlings and daring journeys:

• India (17th century): according to legend, the Sufi saint Baba Budan smuggled seven coffee beans out of Yemen, hidden on his body, and planted them in the hills of Chikmagalur in Karnataka. The hills still bear his name, Baba Budan Giri, and India is now one of the world's major coffee producers.
• The Dutch (1616 onward): in 1616, the Dutch merchant Pieter van den Broecke brought coffee plants from Mocha to Amsterdam. The Dutch East India Company planted coffee in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and southern India, then, at the end of the 17th century, on the island of Java in Indonesia. Javanese coffee became so famous that “java” became a nickname for coffee itself.
• A royal gift (1714): a coffee tree grown in Amsterdam's botanical garden was offered to King Louis XIV of France and kept in a greenhouse at the royal garden in Paris.
• Martinique (early 1720s): the French naval officer Gabriel de Clieu carried a seedling from the king's tree across the Atlantic to Martinique. During the voyage he survived storms and a pirate attack, and he shared his own drinking water with the little plant when water ran short. It thrived, and many of the coffee trees of the Caribbean and Latin America are said to descend from it.
• Réunion (early 18th century): the French planted coffee from Yemen on the island of Bourbon, today's Réunion. This gave birth to the Bourbon coffee variety, prized for its sweetness.
• Brazil (1727): according to a famous story, the Portuguese officer Francisco de Melo Palheta was sent to French Guiana to settle a border dispute. He charmed the governor's wife, who gave him a farewell bouquet with coffee seedlings hidden inside. Brazil would become the largest coffee producer on Earth.
• Jamaica (1728): coffee arrived in Jamaica, where the misty Blue Mountains would later produce one of the most famous coffees in the world.

The Dutch line of coffee plants from Java gave rise to the Typica variety, and the French line from Réunion gave rise to Bourbon. These two heirlooms are the ancestors of many modern Arabica varieties, such as Caturra, Catuai, Mundo Novo, Pacamara and the famous SL28 of Kenya.

This chapter of coffee history also has a dark side. The expansion of coffee plantations in the 18th and 19th centuries relied heavily on slavery and forced labor. By the late 1780s, the French colony of Saint-Domingue, today's Haiti, produced roughly half of the world's coffee, on plantations worked by enslaved Africans. The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) ended that system. In Java, the Dutch “Cultivation System” forced farmers to grow coffee for export, a cruelty denounced in 1860 by the novel Max Havelaar. More than a century later, in 1988, the first Fairtrade label was named Max Havelaar in its honor. Remembering this history is one reason why fair prices for coffee farmers still matter today.

Coffee in Latin America: Brazil, Colombia, Central America and Hawaii

Brazil: the coffee giant

Coffee plantations spread across Brazil in the 19th century, first around Rio de Janeiro and then into São Paulo and Minas Gerais. By the 1840s, Brazil was the world's largest coffee producer, a title it has never lost. Brazilian coffee was grown with enslaved labor until Brazil abolished slavery in 1888, the last country in the Americas to do so. Afterward, millions of immigrants, many from Italy and later from Japan, came to work on the coffee farms. The first official group of Japanese immigrants arrived in 1908 aboard the Kasato Maru at the port of Santos, which gave its name to Brazil's classic export coffee, still known today as Brazil Santos.

Coffee money built Brazil's railways and cities and even shaped its politics: the era when São Paulo's coffee barons and Minas Gerais' dairy farmers took turns in power is still called the café com leite (“coffee with milk”) period. During the Great Depression, Brazil destroyed tens of millions of bags of surplus coffee to support prices, and its search for a way to preserve extra coffee led to the creation of Nescafé instant coffee in 1938.

Today Brazil grows around a third of the world's coffee. Brazilian coffee is usually nutty, chocolatey, smooth and low in acidity, which makes it a favorite base for espresso blends and everyday coffee, like our 6 Bean Blend and Cowboy Blend.

Colombia: the land of Juan Valdez

Coffee reached Colombia with Jesuit missionaries in the 18th century. A local legend tells of a priest, Francisco Romero, who asked his parishioners to plant coffee trees as penance after confession, helping coffee spread through the region. In 1927, farmers created the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia, and in 1958 the federation created Juan Valdez, a fictional coffee farmer with his mule Conchita, who made “100% Colombian coffee” famous around the world. In 2011, UNESCO added the Coffee Cultural Landscape of Colombia to its World Heritage list.

Colombia is one of the world's top three coffee producers and is famous for washed Arabica coffee that is balanced, sweet and bright, with notes of caramel, red fruit and nuts. Discover our Colombia single origin coffee.

Central America and Mexico

Coffee spread through Central America in the 19th century and transformed the region. Costa Rica was the first Central American country to grow coffee commercially for export, and coffee taxes helped pay for San José's magnificent National Theatre, opened in 1897. Guatemala built its coffee industry on the volcanic slopes of Antigua and the highlands of Huehuetenango. Honduras is now the largest coffee producer in Central America, and Nicaragua is known for the mountain coffees of Jinotega and Matagalpa. In Mexico, coffee arrived at the end of the 18th century, and Chiapas, Oaxaca and Veracruz now produce some of the world's finest organic coffee.

Explore these origins with our Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Mexico single origin coffees, or our Latin American Blend.

Peru and the Andes

Coffee has been grown in Peru since the 18th century, and today small farmers in regions such as Cajamarca, Amazonas and Piura grow high-altitude Arabica in the Andes, much of it organic and fair trade. Peruvian coffee is soft and sweet, with notes of caramel and citrus: try our Peru coffee or its decaf twin, Peru Decaf.

Hawaii: coffee made in the USA

In 1828, the missionary Samuel Ruggles planted coffee cuttings in the Kona district of Hawaii's Big Island. Kona coffee, grown on the volcanic slopes of Hualālai and Mauna Loa, became one of the most famous and expensive coffees in the world, and one of the very few coffees grown in the United States.

Coffee in the United States: from the Boston Tea Party to cowboy coffee

Coffee reached the American colonies in the 17th century: Boston licensed its first coffee seller, Dorothy Jones, in 1670. But under British rule, tea was the favorite drink. That changed in 1773, when colonists protesting British taxes dumped chests of tea into Boston Harbor during the Boston Tea Party. Drinking tea suddenly seemed unpatriotic, and coffee became the drink of the American Revolution. Revolutionaries met in places like Boston's Green Dragon Tavern, and in 1793 New York's traders moved into the Tontine Coffee House, an early home of the New York Stock Exchange.

In the 19th century, most Americans bought green coffee beans and roasted them at home in a skillet. During the Civil War (1861–1865), coffee was part of the daily rations of Union soldiers, who brewed it everywhere, while the blockaded South had to make do with substitutes such as chicory, roasted grains and acorns. Historians reading soldiers' diaries have noticed how often the word “coffee” appears: for many soldiers, coffee mattered as much as their rifle.

After the war, coffee became an industry. In 1864, Jabez Burns patented a coffee roaster that could be emptied without being taken off the fire, making large-scale roasting possible. The Arbuckle brothers of Pittsburgh sold pre-roasted coffee in one-pound paper bags, sealed with a glaze of egg and sugar to keep it fresh. Their Ariosa coffee was so popular on the frontier that it became known as “the coffee that won the West.” According to Old West lore, each bag came with a peppermint stick, and trail cooks would ask who wanted the candy to find a volunteer to grind the coffee.

On cattle drives, cowboys made cowboy coffee: coarse grounds boiled in a pot over the campfire, then settled with a splash of cold water before pouring. That strong, no-nonsense spirit lives on in our Cowboy Blend, a mix of dark and medium roasted coffee with cocoa, caramel and vanilla tones.

Big American coffee brands appeared at the same time. Folgers traces its roots to San Francisco during the Gold Rush, in 1850. Maxwell House was named in 1892 after a famous hotel in Nashville; its slogan “Good to the last drop” is often credited to President Theodore Roosevelt, though that story is probably a legend. Around 1900, vacuum-packed cans arrived to keep ground coffee fresh longer, and in 1952 an advertising campaign urged workers to “give yourself a coffee-break,” helping make the coffee break an American institution. During World War II, coffee was rationed at home from late 1942 to mid-1943, while soldiers overseas relied on instant coffee. In diners and donut shops, the bottomless cup of coffee became a symbol of American hospitality, the tradition behind our smooth Gourmet Donut Shop coffee.

Coffee in Asia: Ceylon, Java, Sumatra, Vietnam, India and Japan

Ceylon: the island that switched to tea

In the 19th century, Ceylon (today's Sri Lanka) was one of the world's biggest coffee producers. Then, in 1869, a fungus called coffee leaf rust (Hemileia vastatrix) was identified on the island. Within about twenty years it had destroyed most of the plantations, and planters replaced coffee with tea. That is how Ceylon tea was born. Coffee leaf rust spread across Asia and later Latin America, and it is still the most feared coffee disease in the world.

Indonesia: Java, Sumatra, Bali and beyond

The Dutch made Indonesia one of the great coffee lands. Java gave coffee its nickname, and coffee later spread to Sumatra, Sulawesi, Bali, Flores and Timor. Sumatran farmers developed a unique method called wet-hulling (giling basah), which gives Sumatra coffee its famous heavy body and earthy, herbal, cocoa flavors; the classic Sumatra Mandheling is named after the Mandailing people of North Sumatra. On Bali, coffee grows in the volcanic highlands of Kintamani, often alongside citrus trees. Nearby Papua New Guinea started growing coffee in the 20th century, reportedly from Jamaican Blue Mountain seeds. Indonesia is also home to kopi luwak, coffee collected from the droppings of civets: famous for its price, but avoided by many coffee lovers because of concerns about caged animals.

Indonesia is now one of the world's top coffee producers. Taste the islands with our Sumatra, Bali Blue and Papua New Guinea coffees, or our Asian Plateau Blend. In Indonesian and Malay, coffee is called kopi, the inspiration for our Kopi Safari blend.

Vietnam: the Robusta powerhouse

French missionaries and colonists brought coffee to Vietnam in the mid-19th century, and plantations later spread to the Central Highlands around Buôn Ma Thuột. After economic reforms in 1986, Vietnamese coffee production exploded, and by around 2000 Vietnam had become the world's second-largest coffee producer, mostly of Robusta coffee. Vietnamese coffee culture is unique: strong coffee dripped slowly through a small metal filter called a phin, often mixed with sweetened condensed milk and ice to make cà phê sữa đá. In 1946, a Hanoi bartender facing a milk shortage invented egg coffee (cà phê trứng), whipping egg yolk and sugar into a creamy topping.

India: monsoons and filter coffee

From Baba Budan's seven beans, Indian coffee grew into a major industry in Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. India created one of the world's most unusual coffees, Monsooned Malabar: green beans are exposed to the humid monsoon winds for weeks, recreating the mellow flavor that coffee once developed during long sea voyages to Europe. In South India, people drink filter coffee (kaapi), often blended with chicory, mixed with hot milk and poured back and forth between a tumbler and a small bowl called a davara to make it frothy.

Japan: the art of the slow cup

Dutch traders introduced coffee to Japan through the port of Nagasaki, and Tokyo's first coffee house, Kahiichakan, opened in 1888. Japan developed a passion for precise hand-brewed coffee, quiet kissaten coffee shops, siphon brewers and slow-drip “Kyoto-style” cold coffee. Japan also pioneered canned coffee: the first cans appeared in 1965, and in 1969 UCC launched the first mass-produced canned coffee. Later, Japan gave the world the Hario V60 pour-over dripper (2004).

Coffee in Africa beyond Ethiopia: Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda

Beyond Ethiopia, East Africa produces some of the world's most exciting coffee. In Kenya, missionaries planted coffee at the end of the 19th century, and in the 1930s the Scott Agricultural Laboratories selected the famous SL28 and SL34 varieties. Kenyan coffee is known for its bright, juicy acidity and notes of blackcurrant, grapefruit and berries. In Tanzania, coffee grows on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Meru, and Tanzanian peaberry coffee is especially prized. Uganda is one of the homelands of wild Robusta coffee and one of Africa's largest coffee producers, while Arabica grows on the slopes of Mount Elgon.

In Swahili, coffee is called kahawa, another descendant of the Arabic qahwa. Explore East Africa with our Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda coffees, the fruity African Kahawa Blend and our African Espresso.

Arabica vs Robusta: the two coffees that rule the world

For most of history, coffee meant Arabica. Robusta (Coffea canephora) was only identified by scientists in Central Africa at the end of the 19th century. When coffee leaf rust destroyed Arabica plantations in Asia, planters on Java turned to this hardier plant, and Robusta spread across the tropics.

• Arabica coffee represents around 55–60% of world production. It grows best at higher altitudes, often between 1,000 and 2,000 meters, is more delicate, and offers sweeter, more aromatic flavors: fruit, flowers, chocolate, caramel and nuts. It contains about 1.2–1.5% caffeine.
• Robusta coffee grows at lower altitudes, resists heat and disease better and gives higher yields. It is stronger, more bitter and earthier, with notes of dark chocolate and wood, and it contains about twice as much caffeine as Arabica (around 2.2–2.7%). It also creates a thick crema, which is why many Italian espresso blends include it.

Vietnam, Brazil (where Robusta is called conilon), Indonesia, Uganda and India are the biggest Robusta producers, and Robusta is widely used for instant coffee and strong espresso. If you love a powerful cup, try our Robusta coffee from West Java, our high caffeine Max Caf Blend or Breakfast Blend + with extra caffeine.

Caffeine, roasting and the science of coffee

In 1819, the German chemist Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge isolated caffeine for the first time, after the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe gave him some coffee beans and encouraged him to analyze them. For the coffee plant, caffeine is a natural defense against insects. For humans, it is the world's most popular natural stimulant.

But coffee's magic comes from roasting. Green coffee beans smell grassy and taste nothing like coffee. Roasting at temperatures of roughly 190–240 °C (375–465 °F) triggers the Maillard reaction and caramelization, creating hundreds of aroma compounds: scientists have identified more than 800 of them in roasted coffee. During roasting, the beans pop like popcorn at the first crack, and darker roasts go on to a second crack.

People first roasted coffee in thin pans over the fire, then in rotating metal cylinders from the 17th century onward. Roast names still echo history and geography:

• Light roast (also called blonde or cinnamon roast): bright, fruity, with lively acidity. Try our Blonde roast or Light Roast Breakfast Blend.
• Medium roast (city or American roast): balanced sweetness, caramel and chocolate, like our Medium Blend and House Blend.
• Dark roast (Vienna, French or Italian roast): bold, smoky and bittersweet, with oils on the surface of the beans, like our French Roast and Italian Roast.

History also teaches an important lesson about freshness. After roasting, coffee releases carbon dioxide and slowly loses its aromas as it oxidizes. For centuries, people roasted small batches at home and drank them fresh. In the 20th century, mass production brought coffee that could sit in warehouses and on supermarket shelves for months. That is why the roast date matters so much today (learn more in Why Fresh Roasted Coffee Tastes Better Than Supermarket Coffee). Grinding matters too: from stone mortars to Ottoman brass hand mills and the cast-iron grinders of the 19th century, coffee lovers have always known that coffee ground just before brewing tastes best (see Whole Bean vs Ground Coffee).

The history of coffee brewing methods

How we make coffee has changed as much as where it grows. Here are the inventions that shaped the way we brew coffee at home:

• Boiling (15th century onward): the oldest way to make coffee, still used for Ethiopian coffee in the jebena, Turkish coffee in the cezve, Scandinavian boiled coffee and cowboy coffee.
• The drip pot (around 1800): Jean-Baptiste de Belloy, the archbishop of Paris, is credited with a pot that let hot water drip through the coffee instead of boiling it, the ancestor of drip coffee.
• The siphon or vacuum brewer (1830s): invented in Germany and improved in Scotland and France, this theatrical glass brewer is still loved in Japan.
• The percolator (1889): the American Hanson Goodrich patented the modern stovetop percolator, which dominated American kitchens for decades.
• The paper filter (1908): in Dresden, Germany, a housewife named Melitta Bentz, tired of bitter coffee full of grounds, punched holes in a brass pot and lined it with blotting paper from her son's school notebook. She patented the paper coffee filter in 1908 and founded the Melitta company.
• The French press (1929): French inventors designed early plunger pots in the 1850s, but the modern French press was patented in 1929 by the Italians Attilio Calimani and Giulio Moneta.
• The moka pot (1933): Alfonso Bialetti launched the aluminum Moka Express, said to be inspired by an old washing boiler. It brought strong, espresso-style coffee to every Italian home.
• The Chemex (1941): the chemist Peter Schlumbohm designed this elegant hourglass glass brewer, now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
• The electric drip coffee maker (1954 and 1972): the German Wigomat is often called the first electric drip coffee machine, and Mr. Coffee made automatic drip coffee makers a must-have in American homes from 1972.
• Coffee capsules (1986): Nestlé launched Nespresso, based on a capsule system patented by Eric Favre, and in 1998 Keurig introduced its single-serve brewers in the United States. Coffee pods changed how millions of people make coffee (see our single serve coffee capsules).
• The pour-over revival (2000s): the Hario V60 (2004) and the AeroPress, invented in 2005 by engineer Alan Adler, helped coffee lovers rediscover manual brewing at home.

Every brewing method needs the right grind: coarse for French press and cold brew, medium for drip and pour-over, fine for espresso and moka pot. That is why most of our coffees are available as whole bean or in several grinds, to fit your favorite coffee maker.

The birth of espresso

At the end of the 19th century, Italian cafés wanted to serve coffee faster. In 1884, Angelo Moriondo of Turin patented a steam-powered machine that could brew coffee quickly in large quantities: the ancestor of the espresso machine. In 1901, the Milanese inventor Luigi Bezzera patented improvements that made it possible to brew individual cups on demand, and in 1903 Desiderio Pavoni bought the patent. Their machines, presented at the 1906 Milan Fair, served “caffè espresso”: coffee made expressly, on the spot, for each customer.

These early machines used steam, which made coffee strong but often bitter. The real revolution came after World War II, when the Milan café owner Achille Gaggia launched lever machines that pushed water through the coffee at high pressure. For the first time, espresso was topped with a golden foam: the crema. In 1961, the Faema E61, designed by Ernesto Valente, used an electric pump and a new brew group whose design is still copied today. Its name is said to honor the solar eclipse of 1961.

A classic espresso is brewed with water at about 9 bars of pressure for around 25–30 seconds, producing a small, intense shot crowned with crema. Learn how in our guide How to Make the Perfect Espresso at Home.

Espresso gave birth to a whole family of coffee drinks, each with its own story:

• Cappuccino: named after the brown robes of the Capuchin friars; Vienna's Kapuziner coffee was an ancestor.
• Caffè latte: espresso with plenty of steamed milk, latte meaning milk in Italian.
• Macchiato: espresso “stained” with a little milk foam.
• Ristretto and lungo: shorter and longer espresso shots.
• Americano: espresso diluted with hot water. A popular story says American soldiers in Italy during World War II ordered it to recreate the coffee they drank at home.
• Flat white: born in Australia or New Zealand in the 1980s (both countries claim it).
• Affogato: a scoop of vanilla ice cream “drowned” in a shot of espresso.
• Café mocha: espresso with chocolate and milk, named after the port of Mocha.

In Italy, espresso is usually drunk standing at the bar in a few sips, and in Naples there is a generous tradition called caffè sospeso: paying for an extra coffee that a stranger in need can enjoy later. For a classic Italian-style shot, try our African Espresso, 6 Bean Blend or Decaf Espresso.

Instant coffee, decaf and the 20th-century coffee boom

The invention of instant coffee

The dream of coffee ready in seconds is older than you might think. In 1890, David Strang of New Zealand patented a soluble coffee powder. In 1901, the Japanese-American chemist Satori Kato presented a soluble coffee in Buffalo, New York, and in 1909 George Constant Louis Washington, a Belgian-born inventor living in New York (not the president!), launched Red E Coffee, which became the first mass-produced instant coffee. Instant coffee fueled soldiers in World War I, and in 1938 Nestlé launched Nescafé, after years of research that began when Brazil looked for a way to preserve its coffee surplus. During World War II, American soldiers carried instant coffee everywhere, and freeze-dried instant coffee arrived in the 1960s. Today, premium instant coffee is a favorite for travel, the office and the gym bag: try our Premium Instant Coffee or Instant Coffee with Mushrooms.

The invention of decaf coffee

Decaffeinated coffee was born in Germany. Around 1903, the Bremen coffee merchant Ludwig Roselius found, according to the famous company story, that a shipment of coffee beans soaked by seawater had lost much of its caffeine but kept its taste. He developed a decaffeination process, patented it in 1906 and sold the first commercial decaf coffee as Kaffee HAG in Germany and as Sanka (from sans caféine) in France, a name that later became a famous American decaf brand. Early methods used chemical solvents, but cleaner processes followed: the CO₂ method in the 1970s and the chemical-free Swiss Water Process, which uses only water and filters and was commercialized around 1980. Enjoy coffee without the buzz with our water-process Decaf Espresso, or choose Half Caf for half the caffeine.

Coffee becomes a global commodity

In the 20th century, coffee became one of the most traded agricultural commodities in the world. Big roasters sold pre-ground coffee in cans, often blending in cheaper beans, and price became more important than freshness. To stabilize prices, producing and consuming countries signed the International Coffee Agreement in 1962, which set export quotas. When the quota system collapsed in 1989, prices crashed, and the coffee crisis of the early 2000s left many small farmers struggling. This led to the growth of Fairtrade and other certifications, starting with the Max Havelaar label in 1988, which aim to give farmers a fairer price for their coffee.

The three waves of coffee and the rise of specialty coffee

Coffee professionals often divide modern coffee history into three “waves.”

The first wave: coffee for everyone

From the late 19th century to the 1960s, coffee became an everyday product: canned ground coffee, instant coffee, percolators and diner coffee. The focus was convenience and price, not origin or freshness.

The second wave: the coffee shop era

In 1966, the Dutch-born Alfred Peet opened Peet's Coffee & Tea in Berkeley, California, selling freshly roasted, darker-roasted whole beans. He inspired the founders of Starbucks, who opened their first store in Seattle in 1971, near Pike Place Market, selling coffee beans. In 1983, a trip to the espresso bars of Milan inspired Howard Schultz to turn Starbucks into a chain of espresso bars. Lattes, cappuccinos and coffee to go spread across America and the world, and the coffee shop became a “third place” between home and work.

The third wave: coffee as a craft

In 1974, the coffee importer Erna Knutsen coined the term specialty coffee for beans with special flavors from special microclimates. The Specialty Coffee Association of America was founded in 1982, and today a coffee must score at least 80 points out of 100 on a professional cupping scale to be called specialty grade. The first Cup of Excellence competition took place in Brazil in 1999, and in 2004 a Geisha coffee from Hacienda La Esmeralda in Panama stunned judges with its jasmine and bergamot aromas. Geisha coffees, whose ancestors came from the Gesha forest of Ethiopia, now sell for record prices at auction. In 2002, the roaster Trish Rothgeb named this movement the third wave of coffee: coffee treated like fine wine, with attention to origin, farm, variety, processing, roast date and brewing.

The third wave made single origin coffee, light roasts, pour-over brewing, latte art and barista competitions popular around the world (the first World Barista Championship was held in 2000). Some now speak of a “fourth wave” focused on science, sustainability and great coffee at home. Explore our single origin coffees and coffee blends.

Modern coffee trends: cold brew, iced coffee, flavored coffee and mushroom coffee

Cold brew and iced coffee

Cold coffee has a long history. In the 1840s, French soldiers in Algeria drank mazagran, coffee mixed with cold water. Japan has a long tradition of slow-drip “Kyoto-style” cold coffee. In 1957, according to the popular story, at a trade fair in Thessaloniki, a Nestlé representative shook instant coffee with cold water and ice and created the Greek frappé. In 1964, the American chemical engineer Todd Simpson, inspired by coffee he tasted in Peru, created the Toddy cold brew system. Cold brew coffee, steeped in cold water for 12 to 24 hours, exploded in popularity in the 2010s, followed by nitro cold brew, infused with nitrogen and served on tap like a stout beer. Try our Cold Brew Coffee blend, perfect for cold brew and nitro at home.

Coffee cocktails and barrel-aged coffee

Around 1943, the chef Joe Sheridan created Irish coffee, with whiskey, sugar and cream, for chilly passengers at the Foynes flying-boat terminal in Ireland; the Buena Vista Cafe in San Francisco made it famous in America from 1952. The espresso martini followed in London in the 1980s. Today, some roasters even rest green coffee in whiskey barrels for warm, oaky aromas without any alcohol, like our Whiskey Barrel Aged coffee.

Flavored coffee

Adding flavor to coffee is an ancient idea. Arabic coffee has long been spiced with cardamom, Mexico's café de olla is brewed in a clay pot with cinnamon and piloncillo sugar, and Viennese coffees came topped with whipped cream. In the late 20th century, flavored whole bean coffees like hazelnut and French vanilla became favorites in the United States, and in 2003 the pumpkin spice latte started an autumn tradition. Discover our flavored coffees, from Hazelnut and French Vanilla to Pumpkin Spice and Mexican Chocolate.

Coffee substitutes and mushroom coffee

When real coffee was scarce, people got creative. Napoleon's Continental Blockade (1806) cut France off from colonial coffee and popularized coffee stretched with roasted chicory root, a tradition that lives on in New Orleans chicory coffee. During the world wars, Europeans brewed ersatz coffee from roasted grains and acorns, and in Finland, people are said to have brewed the chaga mushroom when coffee ran out. Today, mushroom coffee blends real coffee with mushrooms such as lion's mane, cordyceps and reishi: discover our Coffee with Mushrooms.

New trends, new frontiers

In 2020, whipped dalgona coffee went viral on social media. Oat milk lattes, high caffeine coffee for athletes, coffee pods and ready-to-drink coffee keep changing how we enjoy coffee. In 2015, the astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti drank the first espresso brewed in space, aboard the International Space Station. And because climate change threatens Arabica (some studies estimate that the land suitable for growing coffee could shrink by half by 2050), scientists are studying forgotten species such as Coffea stenophylla, a West African coffee with a taste close to Arabica that tolerates more heat.

Coffee today: the world in numbers

• People drink more than two billion cups of coffee every day around the world.
• Coffee is grown in more than 70 countries, mostly by millions of small family farms.
• The largest coffee producing countries are usually Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia, Indonesia and Ethiopia. Brazil alone grows around a third of the world's coffee, and Vietnam is the world's leading Robusta producer.
• Finland drinks the most coffee per person in the world, around 9 kg (about 20 pounds) per person per year, followed by other Nordic countries.
• The United States is one of the world's largest coffee markets, and around two in three American adults drink coffee every day.
• In 2024 and 2025, poor harvests in major producing countries pushed coffee prices to record highs.
• Coffee lovers celebrate National Coffee Day in the United States on September 29 and International Coffee Day on October 1.

Coffee history timeline

• Around the 9th century (legend): Kaldi the goat herder discovers coffee in Ethiopia.
• 15th century: Sufis in Yemen drink coffee to stay awake during night prayers, and coffee is cultivated in Yemen.
• 1511: the governor of Mecca bans coffee; the ban is soon lifted.
• 1550s: the first coffee houses open in Istanbul.
• 1582: Leonhard Rauwolf publishes one of the first European descriptions of coffee.
• Early 1600s: coffee reaches Venice; legend says Pope Clement VIII blesses it.
• 1616: the Dutch bring coffee plants from Mocha to Amsterdam.
• 1650–1652: England's first coffee houses open in Oxford and London.
• 1669: the Ottoman envoy Suleiman Agha makes coffee fashionable in Paris.
• 1670: Boston licenses its first coffee seller.
• 1671: the earliest known written version of the goat herder legend is published in Rome.
• 1675: King Charles II tries and fails to close London's coffee houses.
• 1683–1685: the siege of Vienna, then the opening of Vienna's first licensed coffee house.
• 1686: Café Procope opens in Paris.
• Late 1680s: Edward Lloyd's coffee house, birthplace of Lloyd's of London, opens.
• Late 1690s: the Dutch establish coffee plantations on Java.
• 1714: Amsterdam offers a coffee tree to King Louis XIV.
• 1720: Caffè Florian opens in Venice.
• Early 1720s: Gabriel de Clieu brings coffee to Martinique.
• 1727: coffee arrives in Brazil.
• 1728: coffee arrives in Jamaica.
• Around 1732–1735: Bach composes the Coffee Cantata.
• 1773: the Boston Tea Party turns coffee into America's patriotic drink.
• 1777: Frederick the Great urges Prussians to drink beer instead of coffee.
• 1789: Camille Desmoulins calls Parisians to revolution from the Café de Foy.
• Around 1800: the drip coffee pot appears in Paris.
• 1806: Napoleon's Continental Blockade popularizes chicory coffee.
• 1819: Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge isolates caffeine.
• 1828: coffee is planted in Kona, Hawaii.
• 1840s: Brazil becomes the world's largest coffee producer.
• 1864: Jabez Burns patents a commercial coffee roaster.
• 1869: coffee leaf rust is identified in Ceylon.
• 1884: Angelo Moriondo patents an early espresso machine in Turin.
• 1888: Brazil abolishes slavery; Tokyo's first coffee house opens.
• 1889: Hanson Goodrich patents the modern stovetop percolator.
• 1892: Maxwell House coffee is born in Nashville.
• 1901–1906: Bezzera and Pavoni build espresso machines that brew single cups on demand.
• 1903–1906: Ludwig Roselius invents commercial decaf coffee.
• 1908: Melitta Bentz patents the paper coffee filter.
• 1909–1910: Red E Coffee becomes the first mass-produced instant coffee.
• 1927: the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia is founded.
• 1929: the modern French press is patented.
• 1933: Alfonso Bialetti launches the moka pot.
• 1938: Nestlé launches Nescafé.
• 1941: the Chemex is invented.
• 1946: egg coffee is invented in Hanoi.
• Late 1940s: Gaggia's lever machines give espresso its crema.
• 1952: the coffee break is popularized in the United States.
• 1957: the Greek frappé is born, according to the popular story.
• 1958: Juan Valdez is created to promote Colombian coffee.
• 1961: the Faema E61 espresso machine is launched.
• 1962: the first International Coffee Agreement is signed.
• 1964: the Toddy cold brew system is created.
• 1966: Peet's Coffee opens in Berkeley.
• 1969: the first mass-produced canned coffee is launched in Japan.
• 1971: Starbucks opens in Seattle.
• 1972: Mr. Coffee popularizes the automatic drip coffee maker.
• 1974: Erna Knutsen coins the term “specialty coffee.”
• 1982: the Specialty Coffee Association of America is founded.
• 1986: Nespresso launches coffee capsules.
• 1988: the first Fairtrade label, Max Havelaar, is created.
• 1989: the coffee quota system collapses.
• 1998: Keurig single-serve brewers arrive.
• 1999: the first Cup of Excellence is held in Brazil.
• 2000: the first World Barista Championship takes place.
• 2002: the “third wave of coffee” gets its name.
• 2004: Panama's Geisha coffee wows the world, and the Hario V60 is launched.
• 2005: the AeroPress is invented.
• 2011: Colombia's Coffee Cultural Landscape joins the UNESCO World Heritage list.
• 2013: UNESCO recognizes Turkish coffee culture and tradition.
• 2015: the first espresso is brewed in space, and the first official International Coffee Day is celebrated.
• 2020: dalgona coffee goes viral.
• 2024–2025: coffee prices reach record highs.

Fun facts about coffee history

• Coffee “beans” are really seeds, and coffee plants have white flowers that smell like jasmine.
• In Yemen, people also drink qishr, a spiced drink made from dried coffee cherry husks, a cousin of today's cascara.
• According to his secretary, Ludwig van Beethoven counted exactly 60 coffee beans for each cup.
• Voltaire is said to have drunk dozens of cups of coffee a day, and Honoré de Balzac wrote about coffee in his Treatise on Modern Stimulants (1839).
• The nickname “cup of Joe” has uncertain origins: theories include a 1914 alcohol ban in the US Navy and the old slang word “jamoke,” a mix of java and mocha.
• One of the world's first webcams, set up at the University of Cambridge in 1991, was pointed at a coffee pot so researchers could check whether it was full.
• Coffee has been banned many times in history, in Mecca, Istanbul, Sweden and Prussia, and every ban failed.
• The Faema E61 espresso machine is said to be named after the solar eclipse of 1961.
• Several coffee nicknames come from places: java from the island of Java, mocha from the port of Mocha and Santos from the Brazilian port.
• The Swahili word kahawa, the Turkish kahve, the Indonesian kopi and the English coffee all come from the same Arabic word, qahwa.

What coffee history means for your cup today

Five centuries of coffee history teach a few simple lessons that still make the difference between an ordinary cup and a great one:

1. Freshness is everything. For most of history, coffee was roasted in small batches and brewed fresh. At Feel Espresso, we bring that tradition back: every order is roasted 1–5 days before delivery and arrives in 2–5 days, at peak flavor. No months-old supermarket coffee.
2. Origin shapes flavor. Ethiopian coffee is floral and fruity, Brazilian coffee nutty and chocolatey, Sumatran coffee earthy and full-bodied. Exploring single origin coffees is like traveling through coffee history one cup at a time.
3. Blending is an art. From Mocha-Java to the house blends of Italian espresso bars, roasters have always combined origins for balance. Our coffee blends continue that tradition.
4. Grind just before brewing. Like the Ottomans with their brass hand mills, buy whole bean coffee and grind it fresh, or choose the right grind for your coffee maker.
5. Coffee is energy. From Sufi night prayers to Union soldiers and cowboys on the trail, people have always counted on coffee to get through long days. That is why we love strong, full-bodied coffee for sport, work and every busy day (read Coffee Before a Workout).

Not sure where to start? Our Best Sellers Sample Pack lets you taste six coffees, from Peru and Mexico to Bali, or you can browse our best sellers.

Coffee history FAQ

Who discovered coffee?

No one knows for sure. According to the most famous legend, an Ethiopian goat herder named Kaldi discovered coffee when his goats became energetic after eating coffee berries. Historically, the coffee plant comes from Ethiopia, and the first people known to drink coffee were Sufi communities in Yemen in the 15th century.

Where did coffee originate?

Coffee originated in the highland forests of southwestern Ethiopia, where wild Arabica coffee still grows. Coffee as a drink and as a cultivated crop began in Yemen, across the Red Sea.

When did people start drinking coffee?

The earliest reliable evidence of coffee drinking dates from the 15th century in Yemen. Coffee then spread through the Middle East in the 16th century, reached Europe in the 17th century and conquered the world in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Where does the word “coffee” come from?

The word coffee comes from the Arabic qahwa, which became kahve in Turkish and koffie in Dutch before entering English around 1600. Some people link it to the Kaffa region of Ethiopia, but most linguists trace it to qahwa.

Why is coffee called java?

Coffee is called java because the Dutch grew large amounts of coffee on the Indonesian island of Java from the end of the 17th century. Javanese coffee became so famous that “java” became slang for coffee.

Why is it called mocha?

Mocha (al-Mukha) was the Yemeni port from which much of the world's coffee was exported for about two centuries. Mocha coffee often had chocolatey notes, and today “mocha” also means coffee with chocolate.

When did coffee come to Europe?

Coffee reached Europe through Venice in the early 1600s. Coffee houses then opened in Venice, Oxford (around 1650), London (1652), Paris and Vienna during the 17th century.

When did coffee come to America?

Coffee reached the American colonies in the 17th century, and Boston licensed its first coffee seller in 1670. Coffee became America's favorite hot drink after the Boston Tea Party in 1773. Coffee plants arrived in the Caribbean in the 1720s and in Brazil in 1727.

What was the first coffee house?

The first coffee houses appeared in the Middle East: Mecca and Cairo had coffee houses by the early 1500s, and Istanbul by the 1550s. In Europe, early coffee houses opened in Venice, Oxford and London in the mid-17th century. Café Procope (1686) in Paris and Caffè Florian (1720) in Venice are among the oldest cafés still open.

Who invented espresso?

Angelo Moriondo patented an early espresso machine in Turin in 1884. Luigi Bezzera and Desiderio Pavoni created the first machines brewing single cups on demand in the early 1900s, and Achille Gaggia's lever machines created modern espresso with crema after World War II.

Which country produces the most coffee?

Brazil has been the world's largest coffee producer since the 1840s and grows around a third of the world's coffee. Vietnam is second, followed by Colombia, Indonesia and Ethiopia.

What is the difference between Arabica and Robusta coffee?

Arabica is sweeter, more aromatic and grows at higher altitudes. Robusta is stronger, more bitter, easier to grow and contains about twice as much caffeine. Most specialty coffee is Arabica, while Robusta is popular in espresso blends and instant coffee.

Is coffee a bean or a fruit?

Coffee comes from a fruit. The coffee bean is the seed of the coffee cherry, a small red fruit that grows on the coffee plant.

What is the oldest coffee blend?

Mocha-Java, a blend of coffee from Yemen and Java, is often called the oldest coffee blend in the world.

Taste the history of coffee at home

From Kaldi's goats to the espresso machine, the history of coffee is a story of curiosity, adventure and people who simply loved a good cup. The next chapter is written in your kitchen. Discover our freshly roasted single origin coffees, coffee blends, flavored coffees and teas, roasted to order and delivered fresh to your door.