By: Wanda Rossman
In the opening scene of one of my favorite movies, Out of Africa, based on a book by Isak Dinesen, Baroness Karen Blixen laments: “I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.” It is an account of her life in Kenya and what started as a cattle farm, which ended up being a coffee farm.
The history of coffee is inconclusive, but through legend and oral history, the discovery of the benefits of the bean points to Kaldi the goat herder, and coffee forests in Ethiopia.
The word “coffee” has roots in several languages. In Yemeni it is qahwah, in Turkish it’s kahveh, and the Dutch call it koffie. By any name, coffee is the elixir of life.
By the 15th century, coffee was grown in the Yemeni district of Arabia. In what later became Turkey, this popular beverage prompted a law that made it legal for a woman to divorce her husband if he failed to provide her with her daily quota of kahveh. Public coffee houses soon appeared in cities across the Near East for business and social activity.
By the 17th century, travelers to the Near East brought home stories of an unusual dark beverage which, at that time, was unfiltered in the cup, and so coffee made its way to Europe. Pope Clement VII loved coffee so much, that he had coffee baptized
Franz George Kolschitsky, who had lived in Turkey for a time, introduced the concept of coffee houses to the Western world. It’s also believed that he started the custom of filtering coffee, as well as adding milk or cream, and sugar to make coffee less bitter. With coffee’s growing popularity, coffee houses sprang up all over Europe, and became the place to exchange ideas and to make business deals. In 1668, Edward Lloyd opened a coffee house that merchants and maritime insurance agents patronized, then, in time, his establishment became “Lloyds of London,”. Yes, Lloyds of London was founded in a coffee house!
J. S.Bach and Ludwig von Beethoven both composed some of their masterpieces in coffee houses. Bach composed Coffee-Cantata, BWV 211, in 1732. Part of the libretto: “Father, don’t be so severe! If I can’t drink my bowl of coffee three times daily, then in my torment I will shrivel up like a piece of roast goat.”
Beethoven had very specific instructions for making his coffee. He always counted 60 beans for each cup when he prepared his brew.
Then, coffee reached the shores of America. In a letter to Abigail, John Adams penned about a long day of weary travel into the late hours of the afternoon, and asked Mrs. Huston for a “dish of tea provided it had been honestly smuggled.”
“ ‘No sir, said she, we have renounced all Tea in this Place. I cant make Tea, but He make you Coffee.’ Accordingly, I have drank Coffee every Afternoon since, and have borne it very well. Tea must be universally renounced. I must be weaned, and the sooner, the better.”
During the Boston Tea Party in 1773, drinking coffee became a patriotic duty; in my opinion, we are still doing our patriotic duty, and life will always be better because of coffee.
