Myth and legend blend with the history of coffee, a history that stretches back to the “dawn of time,” so varied, elusive, and ancient is its origin, that it has given rise to numerous legends.
Campetelli Coffee is the result of a sweet harmony in the journey of the senses
In the photo, Madame De Pompadour being served coffee.
Some trace the origins of coffee even to the First Book of Kings in the Bible, while others recognize in coffee the bitter beverage called “Nepenthe” that Helen added to wine to dry the tears of the guests at Menelaus’ banquet. However, it is unlikely that Homer, 500-600 years before Christ, knew of coffee. Much later, the first legends about coffee began to emerge. The most common one tells of Ethiopian shepherds who noticed that their goats, after eating the leaves and berries of a certain bush, became much more lively and restless than usual. The same shepherds reported the discovery to the Christian monks at the nearby monastery of Scehodet, and after some experiments, they adopted the infusion of berries as a miraculous herbal tea to stay awake during the long hours of prayer. The resulting beverage was called “Kah wah” or “Cahuè” in Arabic, meaning strength, while in Turkish it was called “Kahvè,” meaning the stimulant.
However, there are various versions of this legend, although its first historical use as a beverage is generally associated with the Sufi philosophers, who drank it to stay awake during their spiritual exercises. Certainly, between the 1300s and 1400s, the first quantities of roasted coffee were already spreading in the Muslim world. Before that, coffee was consumed raw, often crushed into a paste or macerated in water, or even salted and mixed with fats to be formed into loaves.
In the photo, a large Brazilian fazenda in the early 1900s.
Eight years later, the mayor of that city gifted a plant to King Louis XIV of France, who had it kept in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. From there, Captain Clieu managed to steal a plant and transport it to Martinique. Around 1725, the plant arrived in Brazil, but it wasn’t until 1810 that its cultivation was developed, eventually making it the country’s primary resource.
Coffee cultivation is primarily concentrated in:
- – In South America: Brazil (the largest producer), Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador.
- – In Central America, from Mexico to Panama.
- – In Africa, in the temperate zones.
- -in Asia, in India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam.
It was the Arabs who first cultivated coffee commercially and spread its consumption. In the 14th century, coffee cultivation spread to Yemen, where the export of seeds was long prohibited to maintain a monopoly on cultivation. By the mid-1500s, it reached Istanbul, and around 1600, an Indian pilgrim is said to have smuggled seven coffee seeds from Mecca to the Chikmagalur region in India. Meanwhile, in Constantinople, the first public coffeehouse opened in 1554. Later, in Venice, the first coffee shop opened in 1683 in Piazza San Marco, and the famous Caffè Florian, still operating today, was inaugurated in 1720. In the 17th century, the flourishing Republic of Venice began trading the tropical beverage across Europe. The Dutch managed to acquire some plants only in the 1600s, introducing them to Java and then the Indonesian islands.
