Coffee trees were reportedly discovered growing wild, thousands of years ago in Ethiopia by nomadic tribesmen. Legend has it that a goat herder named Kaldi could not find his goats one night. The next morning, he noticed his goats near a small bush with red berries, jumping and running about. Upon trying some of the berries himself, he felt revitalized and was soon dancing with his goats. All coffee trees, the world over, are descended from these Ethiopian trees. The literally billions of coffee trees on the planet today can each be traced back to this area.

Coffee was first cultivated on the Arabian Peninsula around the 12th century, and the Arabs who first roasted and brewed the drink called it, “qahwa” from which we now have the word coffee.

The first coffee houses were established in Constantinople in the 15th century around the same time that the Arab-influenced, Muslim Turks conquered that city and renamed it Istanbul. From there coffee made its way to Europe via trade through Venice (see image below of St. Marks' Square in Venice circa 1600). In the 17th century, the Dutch smuggled coffee plants out of Mocha, a port on the Arabian Peninsula, and transported them to Sri Lanka and the East Indies (such as Java, Indonesia) for their own cultivation and trade.

In the 18th century, coffee was brought to Brazil and the Americas for cultivation in the tropical highlands.

The rest is, as they say, history. Today, coffee is the most popular beverage in the world. It is the second most heavily traded commodity in the world – second only to the world’s other addiction: oil.