The chocolate
9 September 2024
The history of coffee
leads us to Caffa in Ethiopia. Between the 13th and 14th centuries, the Ethiopians brought coffee to Yemen, and from there, it reached Arabia.
In 1615, the Venetian Pietro Della Valle opened the first coffee shop in Italy; about a century later, in Piazza San Marco, the Caffè Florian was established, which is certainly the "oldest coffee house in the world."
Coffee did not have an easy time: it was accused by the Church of being "The Devil's Drink" because it was believed to be a powerful aphrodisiac, “capable of making even the most restrained characters alert, overly talkative, and uninhibited.”
Despite prejudice and prohibitions, the interests linked to the coffee trade grew enormously.
In 1690, the Dutch managed to smuggle a few coffee plants and brought them to Indonesia where, through the East India Company, they became the reference point for the European coffee market.
In 1714, a French naval officer stole a coffee shrub and transported it across the Atlantic, starting coffee cultivation in the French colony of Martinique, an island in the Antilles, where in 1726, the first harvest took place.
The crops became immense, and within 50 years, the plants of Martinique were able to almost entirely meet European demand.
Today, the largest coffee producers are:
Brazil, the dominant power among coffee-producing countries, capable of producing nearly 40% of the world’s supply:
- Vietnam;
- Colombia;
- Indonesia;
- Ethiopia.
The best coffee beans are produced from trees that grow at high altitudes in tropical climates, where very fertile soil can be found: the variety of the plants, the soil, and the climate are other factors that influence the flavor of coffee, helping to distinguish its aroma from one region or plantation to another.
