In 1727 a certain Francisco de Mello Palheta left Brazil on a secret mission to French Guinea. As with all secret missions, it involved danger, secrets, stealing, flight and of course, love. Palheta, designated Secret Agent Jaime Bonda by the Portuguese Crown, was after coffee beans. Some genius in Salvador had the idea that lots of money could be made if Brazil were to grow and export coffee. Of course, Agent Jaime Bonda could not just go up and ask the nice French for some plants or beans, saying something like: "Hey, guys, how about giving me some coffee seeds so we can get rich and put you people out of business?" Not a good idea if you like your head on your shoulders instead of in a basket.
So Agent Bonda came up with plan B. It seems that the French governor had a wife, and evidently the man was a very serious responsible guy, and spent many a day away from home, caring for the King's plantations and other business in Guinea. Big mistake. Anyway, a few nice words here, a complement there, a kiss, and hug and pretty soon Mrs Marie Govenor had been seduced by Agent Bonda. The story is that Marie was fat, ugly and old, so Jaime really was a dedicated secret agent. Anyway, the lady was in love, but Agent Bonda was one cool cat and played non-committed. She insisted that her love was true and eternal.
- "Prove it" he said.
- "How, my love?" she asked.
- "Leave Maurice and come with me to the Rio, where we can get a pent-house apartment on Ipanema beach and watch the cute girls going to the beach", he responded.
- "You idiot" Marie said, "This is 1727 and wives can't leave their husbands for another 200 years and there are not any pent-houses yet."
- "Oh" said Agent Bonda.
- "Please, Jaime, I will do anything to make you happy!"
- "Anything, Marie?"
- "Yes, my dearest, anything!" she responded.
- "Well, since you insist, I would really like a couple of those coffee plants for my dear old grandmother's botanical specimen collection in the convent garden."
- "Ok, Mon Amour, for you I will give anything: whether it be coffee, tea or me!" Marie said, in a low husky voice, her yellowish eyes filling with tears that ran down over her camel-like nose, forming a pool at her lumpy, hairy feet.
- "Well, I'll just have the coffee, thank you!"
Anyway, tradition says that old Palheta got the lady to give him some seeds, which she hid in a bouquet of flowers. He grabbed the banquet and took off to Brazil. Coffee began to be grown in Brazil in about 1729. This is a true story, or at least it is a common story found in the research about coffee. It also may have something to do with why a well known brand of coffee in Brazil is called "Café Palheta."
Any way, coffee didn't become super popular over a large area until the Ottoman Sultan in Istanbul outlawed it in 1543 because it started to get more recognition than he wanted. Of course, then it boomed, following the logic that if it is forbidden it must be good. In 1554, the first coffee house was set up in Istanbul. Coffee houses popped up everywhere. People started going to these places to listen to music, play games, and discuss matters. Coffee houses were soon criticized for being centers of idleness, immorality and vice.
When coffee was first introduced into Europe, by Venetian traders, the clergy in Rome appealed to Pope Clement VIII to have coffee banned, calling it "the Devil's drink", but the Pope liked it so much that he gave it his blessing. Louis IV introduced it to France and in 1643, the first coffeehouse opened in Paris, to be followed by ones in Oxford in 1650 and London in 1652. The first of the famous Viennese coffeehouses was opened in 1683, using sacks of beans left behind by the Ottoman Turks after their unsuccessful invasion of Austria in that year. European coffee houses became popular meeting places for intellectuals and merchants. Insurance companies such as Lloyds, newspaper, clearing houses and shipping exchanges owned their beginnings to coffee houses.
Until the 17th century all of the coffee trade came from Arabia, then slowly, through the efforts of Dutch traders, the cultivation of coffee trees spread to the East Indies and their colonies. In 1690 the Dutch also took seeds to the Island of Java. In 1714 the French succeeded in bringing a live cutting of a coffee tree to the island of Martinique in the West Indies spreading to South America with Brazil starting to grow it in 1729 (thanks to Secret Agent Palheta).
Coffee became big in North America the 1770's, when King George put a tax on tea. The colonists responded to this tax with The Boston Tea Party and a strong turn to coffee. In the United States, soldiers were served coffee bean rations during the Civil War. Any book on the Civil war will mention the fact that the first sound in the camps at dawn were hundreds of Union soldiers stomping and grinding their beans into powder. The government had to issue whole beans rather than ground coffee because the suppliers always would add sawdust or dirt to the powder to increase their profits. The soldier's acquired taste for coffee was the real beginning of the great demand for coffee in the US. By 1940, the United States was importing seventy percent of the world coffee crop. During World War II, American soldiers are issued instant Maxwell House coffee in their ration kits.
Of the many market names for Brazilian coffee, only one, Santos, is of importance for the specialty-coffee trade. Santos coffees are grown mainly in the state of Sao Paulo. In the nineteenth century, the harsh flavor of Rio coffee competed for popularity with the mild Santos. Much of the famous New Orleans coffee was Rio coffee, with chicory added, and some coffees dark-roasted in the United States today for the Latin taste may still include Rio coffee. This is because Latins, who drank the cheap, Rioy-tasting natural coffees at home while the more expensive, washed milds were being sold to the United States, may still crave a bit of the old home-country harshness in their dark-roast blends.
Santos coffee, named for one of the principal ports through which it is shipped, comes mainly from the original Bourbon strain of Coffea arabica brought to Brazil in the eighteenth century from the island of Bourbon, now Reunion. For the first three or four years these trees produce a small, curly bean that coffee people call Bourbon Santos. This is the highest-grade coffee Brazil produces, and it will more than likely be the coffee a store sells as Brazilian. After three or four years, the beans begin to grow larger and flat; this coffee is called Flat Bean Santos and is cheaper and less desirable than Bourbon Santos. Bandeirante is a particularly good and consistent Brazilian estate-grown coffee that appears frequently on specialty coffee lists. Bourbon Santos is smooth in flavor, medium in body, with moderate acidity. In short, the best coffee from Brazil, is decent, but not considered extraordinary.
I guess old Palheta should have also stolen a few high mountains and some rich volcanic soil while he was at it. This would have given Brazil conditions to produce a richer, better and more profitable coffee.
A coffee tree, propagated from seed, bears its first fruit in 5 to 8 years and annually yields more than 2 kg (about 5 lb) of fruit--the red, seed-bearing coffee "cherries"--from which about 0.5 kg (1 lb) of green coffee seeds, or beans, is obtained. The cherries must be harvested by hand, for only those which are fully ripened are picked.
Robusta cherries remain on the tree after they ripen. Ripe arabica cherries fall to the ground and spoil. Arabica trees must therefore be carefully watched and picked over several times -- which increases the cost of producing the richer-flavored arabica beans.
After harvesting, the cherries may be dried and the pulp around the beans removed. Or, in wet climates or for particular types of coffee, the harvested cherries may be washed and then pulped to separate the beans. The dry and wet methods of preparation produce distinctive flavors in the beans and, along with the differences between varieties, account for the subtle flavor distinctions between beans from the various growing areas. The beans are gray green. When they have been thoroughly dried, they are sorted, bagged, graded according to type and quality, and shipped to processors, usually in the importing countries.
The flavor of coffee is determined not only by the variety, but also by the length of time the green beans are roasted. In continuous roasting, hot air (200 deg-260 deg C/400 deg-500 deg F) is forced through small quantities of beans for a 5-minute period; in batch roasting, much larger quantities of beans are roasted for a longer time. Dark-roasted coffees (French or espresso roasts) are stronger and mellower than lightly-roasted beans. After roasting, the beans are usually ground and vacuum-packed in cans. Since the flavor of coffee deteriorates rapidly after it is ground, or after a sealed can is opened, many coffee drinkers buy whole roasted beans and grind them at home.
Instant coffee, which today constitutes about one-fifth of all coffee sold, is prepared by forcing an atomized spray of very strong coffee extract through a jet of hot air; this evaporates the water in the extract and leaves dried coffee particles, which are packaged as instant, or soluble, coffee. Another method of producing instant coffee is FREEZE-DRYING. To make decaffeinated coffee, the green bean is processed in a bath of methylene chloride, which removes the CAFFEINE, and steam, to remove the methylene chloride; or, in a newer and less environmentally stressful method, the caffeine is removed using steam only.
Since the coffee crop is particularly vulnerable to price fluctuations--which are most often caused by coffee surpluses--the coffee-producing countries formed the International Coffee Organization in 1962 in an attempt to regulate production and thus stabilize prices. The organization has been moderately successful in encouraging crop diversification in some countries whose economies were based solely on coffee exports, but has had little effect in restraining surpluses.
Drinking coffee for breakfast dates back to the late 1600's. Here in the U.S. 50% of all coffee is still consumed at breakfast. More than 50 countries grow more than 8 billion pounds of coffee each year. Today coffee ranks second only to oil as the largest "natural" commodity in international commerce. The coffee bean is the world's most valuable agricultural commodity.
After the war, in 1946 in Italy, Achille Gaggia perfected his expresso machine. Cappuccino is named for the resemblance of its color to the robes of the Capuchin monks' order.
In 1971 Mr. Starbucks opened his first store in Seattle's, which can be considered the beginning of the current fresh-roasted whole bean coffee craze.
Today, coffee is appreciated and enjoyed throughout the world, with each country having its own version of the original coffee houses, and coffee drinking is still an activity which tends to draw people together where they can chat and relax in a convivial atmosphere.