To know where exactly coffee found its existence, you should skip and pause at the Ethiopian plateau for a while.
His name was Kaldi, a great herder who found that his goat behaved erratically after eating certain berries. Those goats did not want to sleep at night. He reported this to the local monastery, where a drink was prepared using these berries, and found it kept them alert through the long hours of prayers. That's how the berries were found to be boosting our energy cells.
This word reached across the east, the Arabian Peninsula, so the coffee started its way across the globe. Dated around the 15th century, you need to go back to 600 years, and you can stand at a newly known place called 'Coffee Houses' in the Arabian Peninsula that had recently gained a popular area of the era.
While coffee cultivation gained importance in Persia, Egypt, Syria, and Turkey, Coffee houses started emerging as important Centres for exchanging information.
"Anything could happen over a cup of coffee"
This sentence held up well even back then when people met for coffee breaks where they engaged in conversation, listened to music, watched performances, play chess and discuss events and news around them. It soon gained eminence and attention to such an extent that Coffee houses were referred to as "schools of the wise".
It soon turned out to be,
"It's a wise - man's era and has not seen an end till now".
The Aroma of coffee started spreading across the continent as thousands of pilgrims and patrons visited the Holy city of Mecca.
You would often see people smuggling coffee during this time now. There is a reason for it which you will discover soon.
Coffee was now the 'wine of Arabia'.
As the word spread about coffee and reached Europe, Coffee houses emerged in some of the notable centers that soon arose to be growing centers of social activity and communication in the United Kingdom.
Coffee houses turned to universities.
Coffee houses were now called penny universities as there used to be a lot of exchange of knowledge over a penny spent on coffee.
The alcohol that depressed one's mind and skill were now replaced with coffee due to its effects of energy-boosting capacity. That gave extra hours to people to work. Caffeine became a newly priced brew that replaced wine and beer. People now sprung up with the energy booster doses of everyday coffee and turned out as coffee addicts.
The new Coffee houses that expanded over the country were a place of discussion and trading between like-minded patrons like Businessmen, merchants, traders, brokers, artists, and social activists.
So over 200 years, the world of coffee expanded and many factors led people to replace their other drinks with coffee that let the delivery of coffee to everyone's door.
George III had now forced high taxes on tea, (a majorly used drink at that time) that made people go gaga over coffee.
Times people smuggled beans.
The Island of Martinique.
This might sound crazy but only one coffee Plant was a mother for over 18 million coffee trees on this Island believe it or not this is how the story starts in 1714, 300 years back King Louis XIV of France was gifted a coffee plant that was planted in the Royal Botanical Garden in Paris. In 1723, a young Naval officer, Gabriel De lieu obtained a seedling from the King's plant. He managed to treasure this Seedling to the island of Martinique despite a deadlock voyage attacked by a pirate and somehow reached the destination. This one plant later grew to turn out as a mother plant to every other 18 million coffee plantation on this island now is one of the major places of coffee plantations supplying the world.
Who doesn't know about Brazilian coffee?
You must have heard of the popularity of Brazilian coffee, which has a million-dollar industry and is one of the best coffees in the world. As anything can happen over a cup of coffee Brazil got its seeds to start up with a small love story.
So the emperor of Brazil ordered the clergy to procure seedlings from France. The French people denied sharing their bestowed commodity. But a French governor's wife fell over the beauty of the Brazilian clergy and gave him a bouquet while he left the country with a sad face. To his astonishment, the flower bouquet had seeds of coffee enough to start plantations of today's entire Brazilian coffee Empire.
Many missionaries, monks, traders, and travellers smuggled coffee beans to their land to start coffee cultivation inspired and astonished by the new drink. This is how coffee was spread across the world.
There were many instances when coffee was banned in certain major places due to the sudden surge in popularity and exchange of knowledge that happened over Coffee houses which led to many social activities and revolts. So it was why coffee seedlings were often smuggled by these countries and also hidden by people who processed coffee.
A new world was created.
Fortunes were made and lost.
Coffee spread to India. - Again a smuggled story.