Coffee Story
Kaffee
The sagas recounting coffee origins are countless, most of them clearly apocryphal. Modern historians now agree that coffee was first cultivated and brewed not in Yemen but in a province of Ethiopia called «Kaffee».
What is however true is that coffee gained its widespread popularity in Yemen where it was grown and brewed from the fifteenth century onwards.
But who was the person who first introduced coffee to theYemen after discovering it in Ethiopia? The most popular theory is that it was a Sufi grand master named Ali Ben Omar al-Shadili who came to be known as the «Saint of Mocha». Ali Ben Omar lived first in Ethiopia then shifted to the Yemini port Mocha where he founded a monastery.
The popular story of Kaldi the Yemenite goat herdsman and that of Ali Ben Omar here begin to converge for the story goes that at the Saint's monastery coffee was used to keep initiates awake during nightly rituals, particularly the Dhikr ceremony.
Prior to the mid-seventeenth century no coffee had been grown outside Ethiopia and Yemen. The rulers of Yemen jealously guarded their lucrative coffee trade and made sure of the monopoly by boiling or roasting all seeds that were exported. However this monopoly could not last and soon coffee made its way into the world and coffee cultivation became widespread in South America and on the Indian Subcontinent.
Coffee trading extended to Constantinople in the mid of 15th century, and then made its way to England and Europe. Coffee Houses became such popular meeting points that King Charles II tried to ban them on the ground they were «seminaries of sedition». Fortunately his efforts were in vain. Coffee then reached East and West Indies through Dutch traders. A lone surviving plant shipped on behalf of the King of France generated all the plantations of the New World.
The pioneering era of the coffee trade drew to a close in the nineteenth century and consumption of coffee around the world came to depend increasingly on new inventions such as instant and decaffeinated coffee, Melitta Benz's paper coffee filter and Achille Gaggia's espresso machine.
Coffee evolved not just as a stimulating and tasty brew but also as big business and by the mid twentieth century coffee had become a hugely traded commodity second only to oil.
The cafe culture of today still evokes images of distant lands, romantic voyages and mysteries that seems to have the power to keep one dreaming.
The coffee drinker has always been more passionate about his brew than any other non-alcoholic beverage drinker. In the words of Johane Sebastian Bach's Cantata in 1732 :
«Ah ! How sweet coffee tastes !
Lovelier than a thousand kisses,
Sweeter than Muscatel wine.
I must have my coffee.»
Elephant valley coffee strives to continue this passionate tradition...
