Coffee & Tea
Pre 1000 AD
A berry that is ground up and mixed with animal fat is found to give anenergy boost. Coffee plants grow wild on hills above sea level in Ethiopia.
or
One version of the story or the origin of coffee, involves a goat herdernamed Kaldi. he was from the land of Arabia Felix (Abyssinia). One nightwhen his goats didn't come home, he went looking and found them dancingin abandoned glee near a shiny, dark-leaved shrub with red berries. Kaldistarted munching on the red berries. It wasn't long before he was dancing.
1000 AD
Arab traders bring coffee to Yemen (on the Arabian peninsula) and cultivatethe plant for the first time on plantations.
1453
Coffee is introduced to Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks. First Coffeehouseis opened in 1475 "Kiva han."
1713
By the 16th Century, by means of coffeehouses in Mecca and Cairo, the spreadof coffee was rapid. Everywhere that people tasted coffee, they wantedit. Coffee was available either from Mocha, the main port of Yemen, orJava. Hence Mocha-Java. In those days, Mocha-Java symbolized "theputting together in one drink, the entire possible world of coffee experience.
Now comes one of the most extraordinary stories in the spread of coffee,the "saga of the noble tree." Louis XIV of France was an ardentcoffee drinker. The Dutch owed him a favor and managed, with great difficulty,to procure him a coffee tree. The tree was obtained from the Arabian portof Mocha, then carried to Java, and then back across the seas to Holland,where it was brought overland to Paris. The first Greenhouse in Europewas constructed to house "the noble tree." That was 1715.It is the Dutch who deserve recognition for having fully appreciated thearomatic and stimulant qualities of the new beverage, and for having realizedthe possibility of its extensive cultivation in their colonies, so coffeewas introduccd into South and Central America, where it found a better habitatthan in its place of origin. Consequentlv, in a short time Brazil, Colombia,and Mexico had the largest production, and still have today. From that singletree, sprung billions of arabia trees, including those grown in Centraland South America.
In 1723, a French Naval officer, Gabriel Mathew de Cliev, stolea seedling and transported it to Martinique. Within 50 years, an officialsurvey records 19 million coffee trees on Martinique. Eventually, 90% ofthe world's coffee spreads from this plant.
Deamer 11/19/96