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Turkish Coffee is
prepared by finely grinding coffee beans and then boiling those
grinds. If you want to try this special preparation, it’s mainly
served in Turkey and Greece.
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The first coffee
plants to be commercially grown and harvested were in the
Arabian Peninsula. They were grown in a port called Mocha.
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Coffee drinking
first became popular in the Orient in 1600 A.D.
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Europe was first
introduced to coffee in 1615. The Venetians told the Europeans
about the beverage.
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The famous Lloyd’s
of London first started as Edward Lloyd’s coffeehouse.
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The first coffee
mill to manufacture coffee in London started in the 1600s.
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A Boston woman,
Dorothy Jones, was the first American coffee trader. She
obtained her license in 1670.
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William Penn
bought a pound of coffee in 1683 from a New York merchant for
$4.68.
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The French
monarch, King Louis XIV, started the tradition of putting sugar
in coffee in 1715.
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The first
marketing of coffee shops happened in 1716. This is when
Venetian coffee shops started handing out flyers praising their
newest product.
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The Arabs get all
credit for the espresso carts that can be found all over Europe
today. It was in this fashion that coffee was originally sold
before the first café was opened in the 1700s.
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Today, most coffee
comes in vacuum packs to preserve the freshness of the beans or
grinds. This originated in 1898.
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Espresso is as
important to Italy as champagne is to France.
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Voltaire, a famous
French philosopher, is known to have drunk up to fifty cups of
coffee a day.
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Coffee retailers
routinely find that they have a drop in caffeinated coffee sales
and an increase in decaffeinated coffee sales every January.
This is due to many people making New Year’s resolutions to
lessen the amount of caffeine they consume.
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Coffee trees are
evergreens and can grow up to fifteen feet. They are usually
pruned to about eight feet high to make it easier to harvest
them.
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These trees
produce flowers that have a very short life span but possess a
beautiful fragrance. The fragrance is a blend of jasmine and
orange. The flowers produce small coffee cherries and it
generally takes approximately four or five years for a tree to
produce a commercial harvest.
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Brazil is the
largest manufacturer of coffee today. They produce over 1/3 of
the coffee in the world, which accounts for approximately 3 1/3
billion pounds of coffee.
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There are
forty-five countries in the world that currently manufacture
coffee.
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Only one state in
the United States grows coffee for commercial purposes. That
state is Hawaii.
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Every year, Hawaii
holds a coffee picking contest called the Kona Festival. The
winner is a state celebrity for that entire year.
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The months to
harvest coffee in Hawaii is November through April.
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Brazil employs
approximately five billion Brazilians to make coffee. Of those
five billion, most participate in harvesting and cultivating
over three billion coffee plants.
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Coffee beans are
not always processed right away. Some beans are stored for many
years while they are still green and some are actually believed
to become better tasting with age.
