Coffee History

Whether used as early morning eye-brightener or mid-afternoon pick me up, it could be argued that coffee has replaced tea as the hot drink of choice in the UK.

For many, coffee is much more than just a drink; meeting up for a coffee has become a social occasion. The sheer number of coffee shops that have sprung up in every city, town and village in Britain is testament to how important the consumption of coffee has become in everyday life.

In these days of skinny lattes, frappuccinos and double strength espressos, it is sometimes hard to imagine that just a couple of decades ago coffee shops were virtually unheard of in the UK. The impact of 1990s TV imports such as Friends led to an increased public interest in the concept and soon chains such as Starbucks were springing up across the country.

Today's coffee lovers can take their pick from any number of different blends, roasts, strengths and flavours. Until fairly recently however, options were much more limited. That is not to say that coffee hasn't long been savoured in the UK, but the sheer choice and variety that we now take for granted is a very modern phenomenon.

To understand our modern obsession with coffee, it is necessary to delve right back into the history of the discovery of the coffee bean itself. The exact who, where and when of coffee discovery remains unclear and there are various myths and stories surrounding the history of the bean.

The most popular of these stories holds that an Ethiopian shepherd was stunned by how lively his goats became after chewing coffee berries and sought to find a way of enjoying the energy-giving properties himself. Whether or not this is true may never be known, but what is clear is that the history of coffee dates back to at least the 15th Century and does indeed appear to have begun in Ethiopia.

The first known coffee trees were found in the province of Kaffa, in the Horn of Africa. The coffee 'berry' is thought to have been chewed by native Africans for centuries before being officially 'discovered'. The slave trade saw the berries making their way from Africa to Yemen and Arabia, via the port of Mocha - now a word synonymous with that indulgent coffee and chocolate blend.

The first recorded evidence of coffee being roasted and drunk dates back to the mid-15th Century, when it was brewed in Yemen's Sufi monasteries. Traders from Yemen began to cultivate the bean and it is thought that the world's first coffee house was opened in Istanbul in the mid 1500s.

The stimulating brew was not entirely well-received at first. Some orthodox religious leaders in the Middle East banned the drinking of coffee in 1511, although these bans were widely overturned by 1524. However, a similar ban was introduced in Egypt in 1932, with religious leaders closing coffee shops and sacking the workers. It was not until the 19th Century that Egyptian religious leaders began to relax their attitudes towards the drink, by which time drinking coffee had become common practice across much of the world.

By the turn of the 16th Century, coffee had spread to other countries in the Middle East as well as further afield to countries such as Turkey and Morocco. From here, the coffee tree began to be planted still further from its African home, first in Italy and then across wider Europe, Asia and the Americas.

The word coffee itself was first used in English towards the end of the 1500s, having been taken from the Dutch word koffie. By 1675 there were more than 30,000 coffee houses in the UK, although these are unlikely to have borne much resemblance to the sleek US-style coffee lounges we know today. Bizarrely, women were banned from many of England's coffee houses, with men gathering there in much the same way as they would gather in public houses.

Coffee beans were introduced to the Americas with great success and Brazil remains the world's largest coffee producer today. Coffee remains a major export for many of the world's poorest nations and the Fair Trade movement has done much to improve conditions for the communities cultivating and harvesting the coffee beans.

Whilst many of us swear by coffee to wake us up in the morning, the success of decaffeinated coffee shows that the bean is appreciated for its taste just as much as its stimulating properties.

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