Coffee was introduced throughout Africa beginning in the 10th century. It’s thought to have originated in Ethiopia, then spread throughout the continent. Eventually, the custom of drinking it spread across Europe, Asia, and the Americas as the centuries passed. It was an arduous process for coffee to be incorporated in national and international markets.

Monetizing Coffee:

Around the beginning of the 18th century, a burgomaster — the Dutch equivalent of a mayor — from Amsterdam, named Nicolaes Witsen used his influence through the Dutch East India Company to persuade the Dutch governor of Batavia, Joan van Hoorn, to make coffee plants available for export. He argued that the port of in Yemen was the best place to start, Indonesia’s coffee was exported here. The Indonesian coffee was then exported from Yemen and imported to Europe, supplying the continent with this coffee.

Coffee’s production then spread to Sumatra and surrounding Sunda islands in Indonesia after the Dutch governor, Joan van Hoorn obtained the coffee from the Yemen export port. Amsterdam’s Hortus Botanicus of Leiden, the oldest Dutch botanical garden. The Dutch traded their new coffee plants with the French, who grew them in greenhouses like their Jardin des Plantes in Paris.

Americas:

It was Captain Gabriel des Clieux, a French naval officer and governor of Guadeloupe who ensured the production of coffee in South America. He managed to gather a few of the plants from botanist Antoine de Jussieu, and brought them back to Guadeloupe, where their production spread to Martinique and Saint-Domingue.

In Brazil, it wasn’t until 1727 that their first coffee plantation was instituted by Lieutenant Colonel Francisco de Melo Palheta, who smuggled seeds into the country after seducing the governor’s wife from the Brazilian state of Pará. By the 1800s, Brazilian coffee became accessible for every social class, and currently ranks as the world’s top producer of coffee.

We have a large variety of coffees from countries across the world. Make sure you try them all.