The History and Origin of Coffee

Coffee is the most widely drunk beverage — apart from water — all over the world. Considering that coffee grows in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, and is drunk nearly everywhere, it might surprise you to learn that most of the coffee we drink can be traced back to a single plant.

The coffee you’re drinking right now might have come from Brazil or Ethiopia, Yemen or Panama — or any one of the eighty or so countries that produce coffee worldwide. But to understand where coffee comes from, we need to know two things: where the plant comes from, and also where coffee was first roasted, ground, and turned into a drink.

We’ll start with the coffee plant. There are well over 100 species of coffee tree that we know about — but only two that we drink in any significant quantity: Arabica (Coffea arabica) and Robusta (Coffea canephora). Of the two, Arabica is the one we drink the most.

Arabica has a more delicate flavor than Robusta, but is more expensive to produce, so tends to cost more. Robusta, as Arabica’s cheaper cousin, is more often used in blends, although the quality of Robusta available is getting better all the time.

Arabica is the ‘original’ species of coffee, the one that humans discovered and started drinking first. Robusta, on the other hand, is a relative newcomer — so our history of coffee begins with the history of Arabica.

The origin of Arabica coffee

Arabica coffee originates from Ethiopia, where coffee trees grow wild among the high mountain forests. The Oromo people of Ethiopia knew about the effects of coffee long before anyone thought of making it into a drink, and would eat the fruit, or chew the leaves and raw seeds to fortify them for battle or for long journeys.

According to the ancestral religion of the Oromo, when the first man died, the god Waqa wet his grave with his tears, and the first coffee plants sprouted where his tears fell.

This ancient story reminds us of Arabica’s origins as a wild plant. The Oromo would have found coffee trees dotted throughout the forests of their homeland, and accepted them as gifts from the gods.

Arabica began life as a cross between Coffea canephora and Coffea eugenioides, two species of coffee that cannot normally interbreed. The event that caused these two species to combine is so rare that it probably happened only once, which means that the entire Arabica species most likely descends from a single plant.

Scientists estimate that the first Arabica coffee tree grew in Ethiopia somewhere between 10,000 and 665,000 years ago. This makes Arabica a very young species, and means that all Arabica trees are quite closely related.

During the sixth century, the Aksumite Empire of Ethiopia crossed the Red Sea and conquered Yemen, bringing coffee with them. While the Ethiopians were driven out, coffee stayed behind and flourished in Yemen.

The first coffee drinkers

The legend of Kaldi tells the story of how coffee was discovered, and the first time it was roasted and brewed. According to the legend, Kaldi, a young goatherd, noticed that when his goats ate the berries from a particular tree, they became unusually energetic, leaping and dancing around. He tried eating the fruit himself, and the burst of energy the fruit gave him meant that soon he too was dancing along with his goats.

A passing Imam saw Kaldi dancing with his goats, and assumed that these fruits must be the work of the devil. The Imam threw them into the fire, only to be met with the wonderful smell of freshly roasted coffee. The heavenly smell of coffee caused the Imam to change his mind about the beans, and he pulled them from the fire and dropped them into some water to stop them burning away completely. Thus, the Imam accidentally brewed the first cup of coffee.

When the Imam discovered the alert but peaceful sensations that he got from drinking the coffee, he soon shared the secret with the Sufi monks at the nearby monastery. Coffee drinking became an important part of the monks’ nightly prayers, and thus coffee spread throughout the Islamic world.

While Kaldi himself probably never existed, it’s true that the Sufi monks of Yemen were probably the first to brew and drink coffee. Exactly when they discovered the effects of coffee is not certain, but by the fifteenth century coffee-drinking was well established in Yemen.

The monks’ nightly drink, qahva, was originally made with Khat, the leaves of another stimulating plant grown in Ethiopia. Khat leaves eventually gave way to roasted coffee seeds, and coffee as we know it today was born.

Coffee travels the world

Coffee-drinking became popular for social gatherings as well as nighttime prayers, and during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, coffee spread throughout the Islamic world. From the Ottoman Empire in modern-day Turkey, coffee-drinking reached Europe, and the first coffee house in Europe was established in Venice in 1645.

The new drink quickly became very fashionable, and the trade in coffee from Yemen, via the port of Mokha, was booming — so much so that the word Mocha became synonymous with coffee.

The Yemenis were careful to only export dried seeds that could no longer be planted to grow new trees. One legend tells of a Sufi pilgrim named Baba Budan, who brought seven coffee seeds back to India with him hidden in his beard, and thus was able to establish the first coffee plantation outside of Yemen. Other than this, however, the Yemenis guarded their trees and the live seeds closely, in order to keep control of the coffee trade in Europe.

Eventually, however, a Dutch trader managed to smuggle a few live plants out of the country, planting them in a greenhouse in Amsterdam’s botanical gardens. From there, the Dutch sent seeds to their colonies in Java and Suriname, giving rise to the first commercial variety of coffee, called Typica.

Some time later, coffee trees arrived on the island of Bourbon, now known as Reunion. The trees growing on Bourbon had higher yields than Typica, so the seeds from there were sent around the world. This variety of coffee became known as Bourbon.

The vast majority of coffee grown around the world today descends from these two famous varieties. Many more varieties have been discovered, or created in breeding programs, since then — but nearly all of them can be traced back to Typica, Bourbon, or both. This means that coffee has very little genetic diversity — a worrying prospect, when coffee is threatened by pests, diseases, and climate change.

The origin of Robusta coffee

Robusta coffee originates from the rainforests of the Democratic Republic of Congo, in West Africa. In these warm, wet conditions, Robusta needs to defend itself against insects, and so it contains much more caffeine and other bitter compounds that are poisonous to insects. This makes it much more ‘robust’ and easy to grow, but also means that it makes a stronger and more bitter coffee.

Whatever the local peoples knew about the Robusta coffee tree is unfortunately lost to history. Europeans came across Robusta for the first time in the nineteenth century, and sent it to plantations in Brazil, Indonesia, and India, to provide a cheaper source of coffee.

This makes Arabica hundreds of years older than Robusta, in terms of when it was first roasted and brewed. However, Robusta is the older plant by far. In fact, Robusta is one of the parents that gave rise to Arabica all those years ago.

Incidentally, Arabica’s other parent, Coffea eugenioides, has a delicate, sweet flavor and has recently started appearing in coffee competitions. It’s hard to grow, and therefore rare and expensive, but well worth trying if you get the opportunity.

Where does your coffee come from?

The biggest producer of coffee today is Brazil, which produces nearly a third of the world’s coffee. Brazil mainly produces Arabica, but about 10% of the crop is made up of the cheaper Robusta.

While Brazil is well-known as the largest coffee producer, the name of the second-largest coffee producer might be a surprise for some: Vietnam. Vietnam’s coffee industry took off in the late 1990s, after the government invested heavily in coffee-growing. Vietnam produces almost entirely Robusta, and in a very short time became the second-biggest producer of coffee in the world.

Between them Brazil and Vietnam produce more than half of the world’s coffee. The rest comes from other countries in the tropics. Arabica grows best at high altitudes, so it grows in more mountainous countries, while Robusta is less particular about where it grows. The most important producers are Colombia, Honduras, Mexico and Peru in the Americas; Indonesia and India in Asia; and Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya in Africa.

Modern brewing methods

The first coffee would have been brewed in a pot, boiled together with water over an open fire — not that different to the way Arabic coffee is made today. Arabic coffee is therefore certainly closest to the original coffee brewing method, and so the history of Arabic coffee goes back hundreds of years or more.

When coffee reached Turkey during the 16th century, the servants of the Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent are said to have invented the cezve as a way to brew up a pot of coffee for the Sultan more quickly. When coffee spread from Turkey into Europe, the cezve became the most common brewing method in those countries.

It wasn’t until the 18th century that the French, trying to create a more delicate brew, began using linen cloths to filter out the coffee grounds, and started mixing coffee with milk to soften the taste.

Paper filters, on the other hand, are a surprisingly recent invention. A German housewife named Melitta Bentz came up with the idea in 1908, and the company she founded still bears her name today.

Espresso first appeared around the same time, gradually developing into the drink we know today by the mid-20th century. This new, fast brewing method spread throughout much of the world — along with Italian migrant workers — during the 20th century.

While the coffee plant comes from Ethiopia, it’s clear that coffee as a drink comes from the Arabian Peninsula. This, after all, is why the most important species of coffee was given the name Coffea arabica. Thanks to those Sufi monks, now we all get to benefit from the stimulating effects — and delicious taste —  of the coffee tree.