A Very Brief History of Coffee

The coffee tree & its remarkable berries were first discovered growing wild in the region now known as Ethiopia.

Coffee was first prepared not as a beverage but as a food. African tribes would use stone mortars to crush the ripe cherries from wild coffee trees, mix them with animal fat & then fashion this exotic blend into round balls, which they consumed on their war parties.

Around 1000 A.D. the neighboring Arabs began to boil the dried, crushed seeds to make a hot drink. Due to religious, medical, & commercial considerations, the spread of the bean through Arabia & subsequently Europe/the Americas was impeded by prohibitions & powerful restrictions on the export of trees & Cultivatable seeds. The result - intrigue.

In the early 1700's, a coffee tree reached as a gift in Paris, by way of the Dutch who had colonies in the East Indies (Java). The coffee tree was kept in the Jardin des Plantes, bringing great celebrity to the royal botanist, Antoine de Jussieu. A young naval officer serving in the New World, in Martinique, thought that by taking seedlings back to the Indies he might introduce a profitable new crop to the French colony. His name was De Clieu.

De Clieu approached de Jussieu with his plan, but seeing his fame at stake, he refused. De Clieu then sought out Monsieur de Chirac, the royal physician. Finally persuaded by the intervention of a beautiful lady of high rank, Chirac enabled De Clieu & his companions to steal over the walls of the Jardin des Plantes & make off with cuttings from the coffee tree. A single plant survived in De Clieu's garden, producing a great many viable seeds. It's said that the huge coffee industries of the New World- from Mexico to Brazil- grew from this one tree.