Legend has it that between 800-900 A.D. Kaldi, an Ethiopian goat herder noticed his goats eating the berries off a shrub. After which, the goats became very energetic and began dancing around the fields. Kaldi grew more interested in this berry and found after he consumed it that he became livelier as well.
A curious monk who heard of this picked some of the same berries and crushed them into a powder and mixed the powder with boiling water which as history states was the first cup of coffee. This practice of crushing and steeping the berries with hot water became a routine for the monks
The coffee plants were then taken to Yemen by Arabian Traders and planted. By the 1300s coffee crops spread into North Africa, the Mediterranean and Asia. Soon coffee houses were started in the 1500’s as a place for socializing. Coffee did not make its way to Europe until the mid to late 1600s. King Louis XIV cultivated this “Noble Tree” in his royal gardens in France.
1882 Coffee enters the New York Stock Exchange. After this, the coffee culture grew rapidly. The decaffeination process was developed in Germany in 1900, soluble coffee was invented in 1901 and Melitta Bentz, a German housewife in 1908, invented the first coffee filter. 1933 brought us the first automatic espresso machine, invented by Dr. Ernesto Illy and the first Cappuccino was created in 1948. Interesting fact: Cappuccino means, “little hood” and derives from Italy where the beverage’s brown color and cap of white foam reminded them of the Capuchins Monks.
1966 is the year Specialty Coffee entered the United States by Alfred Peet, the son of a Dutch Coffee Roaster.
