A brief history of coffee

It is probably common knowledge that coffee was discovered in Ethiopia. The “red” cherries, which the sheep ate and became very active, were taken home and tasted. What was known as the devil’s fruit became coffee as the world knows it today. Another tale that has been around for some time involves an Arabian who used coffee beans to survive an exile and was discovered near the town of Mocha. So, we now refer to one of the coffees as “mocha.”

There is a lot of history and legends about coffee, creating a mystique for the beverage. Famous luminaries seem to have had some kind of brush with the drink. And it is said that the Boston Tea Party, so well-known for throwing away boxes of tea, considered coffee drinking a patriotic act.

Coffee remained in Arabia for quite some time and was a secret that Arabians were not keen to share with outsiders. India was one of the first few countries outside Arabia to get a taste of coffee. From then on, there was no holding back for the popularity of this drink. 

Coffee is now grown in around eighty countries in South and Central America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. All of the regions that grow coffee are in tropical zones within 30 degrees or so of the equator. 

Many famous words and trends have been the output of coffee as it gets accepted as part of the global culture. Countries like Brazil have an entire economy dependent on coffee production, and the United States is one of the largest coffee drinking nations in the world.

And did you know that Vietnam is the second-biggest coffee producer in the world?