A History of Gourmet Coffee Drinks

Coffee beans were discovered by a goatherder by the name of Kaldi, in Ethiopia, over a thousand years ago. One day, Kaldi noticed his goats presented an excited and sleepless behaviour at night, after they had been eating red berries growing in bushes. After eating some of those berries himself, Kaldi felt the same vitality. This legend begins the history of gourmet coffee drinks.

Coffee has first been used as a beverage by the Turks. They had a special method of preparation in which they added many spices such as anise, cardamom, cinnamon and clove to the coffee grounds to make the coffee beverage flavorful. So, surprisingly enough, in history, gourmet flavored coffee was consumed before black coffee was. This particular Turkish coffee beverage can be tasted in many coffee houses or can be prepared at home. "Is not the very name, COFFEE, suggestive of aromatic odors?..." Click the previous link for to see a fun illustrated historical reprint of the history of coffee.

The opening of the first coffee house was in Constantinople in 1475. History has it that Europeans had to wait until the 17th century before the first coffee houses were opened in Venice and London. In Europe, coffee was known as Arabian wine. Around that time, people started to add milk and sugar to their coffee drinks and actually remove the coffee grounds from the beverage before drinking it.

Obviously, European countries introduced coffee in their colonies, many of which were in Central and South America. Today, most of the coffee produced in the world comes from this area. However, gourmet coffee drinks would never have developped so much in the United States of America if it hadnt been for the Boston Tea Party that made drinking coffee a patriotic act.

For THE resource in history of coffee, I recommend Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World, by Mark Pendergrast. Today, Starbucks and other great coffee houses are making history by inventing more and more gourmet coffee drinks.

Also see our Gourmet Coffee Beans page for more information about coffee.