Coffee: "Grounds" For A Love Affair

This article was updated slightly on June 19, 2015.


Each day one hell of a lot of people get their day going with coffee. In fact, quite a number of people keep their day going with coffee. "Apparently" coffee plants grew wild in Kaffa, a province of Ethiopia (also known for a long time as "Abyssinia") and the locals began using the plant to make a drink around 1000 A.D., give or take a hundred years or so. People from the Arabian Peninsula got hold of some plants and began to make a regular business out of growing and making coffee, but when the Turks acquired some plants in the 1500s, they seem to have been the first to roast the berries from the plant, the "beans," which they then ground and boiled in water. Venice was a major trade center in Europe in those times, and the Venetian traders brought coffee home in the early 1600s. It wasn't long before the Venetians and other Italians opened a number of coffeehouses, the first in Europe.* Trade and diplomatic missions brought coffee to France in the mid 1600s, where the French opened "cafés," the French term for "coffeehouses." The mid 1600s also brought coffee to England, where literally hundreds of coffeehouses opened in a relatively short period of time. Of course it wasn't long before European colonists from several nations began toting coffee off to the New World, where it has flourished ever since, and several countries are among the world's biggest producers of coffee: Brazil is the #1 coffee producer and Columbia is #2, while both Mexico and Guatemala are in the top ten. Indonesia, Vietnam and Ethiopia are also major producers in the top ten. Americans are likely more familiar with Columbia, as coffee from that country has been advertised here for decades. **

The latter part of the 1600s brought the Germans into the act, as the Turks besieged Vienna, then the capitol of the Old German Empire.*** When the siege was broken, the Turks left large quantities of supplies behind, including coffee beans. The coffee business soon took hold in Vienna and it spread to other German areas. Vienna is still known for its coffeehouses, where you pretty much need to take a class just to learn the various terms for coffee served in a variety of ways. I'd venture to say that any and all German and Austrian coffeehouses have my favorite, "Eiskaffee," or Ice Cream Coffee; cold coffee over vanilla ice cream in a tall glass, typically served with whipped cream and a cookie. If you order this, you get to cover a couple of your vices all in one order. What's not to like?

* Technically, the Turks, under the name, the Ottoman Empire, occupied a part of southeastern Europe in the Balkans, including the former city of Constantinople, which they eventually renamed Istanbul.

** For more see:  http://www.nationalgeographic.com/coffee/map.html

*** The proper name was, "The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation."     

WORD HISTORY:
Coffee-The ultimate origins of this word are disputed, but while I understand the desire to claim the origins of the word for this popular drink, I lean toward the word being derived from the old Ethiopian province of "Kaffa," where "supposedly" the plant grew wild and was first used for making a beverage. Trade contact likely brought Arabic speakers to borrow a form of the word as, "qahwa/qahwah." This then was borrowed by Turkish as "kahveh." The Venetians, avid traders, learned of the beverage from the Turks, giving Italian "caffe." This was borrowed into English as "coffee" in the early 1600s, again, undoubtedly the result of trade and the resulting desire for the beverage.