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Coffee begins the day for many of us, so now let's see how it started. It was cultivated from the Ethiopian plant Coffea arabica and became so much more over time. It's even had central placing in movies like "Out of Africa", where Meryl Streep's character grows it in Kenya. According to the National Coffee Association, the coffee plant was first discovered by an Ethiopian goatherd named Kaldi. Soon, everyone was growing the bean. By the sixteenth century, the Arabs were trading it far and wide.

GROWING AND PICKING

The coffee bean is very temperamental. It grows well within the latitudes of 25 degrees north to 30 degrees south; the environment is nice and moist and the ground is very fertile. If a hurricane comes through the region of a coffee plantation, or a nearby volcano erupts - even if there's a bit of a frost - it'll change the chemistry of the plant, thereby altering the taste subtly. It's like a fine wine, in that way. A hard frost or an excess of the bacteria that usually makes wine sweeter, will change the taste of the vintage. This is why you find many different coffee tastes.

Still, the arabica coffee bean that was discovered by that goatherd survives - and thrives - today. It's much more common, too, than its relative the robust, growing all over the world. For instance, it's found in the mountains of Columbia. Americans used to regularly see Juan Valdez selling Columbian coffee on his mule. Actually, in Columbia, that's the way the beans are transported because the landscape is so tough. Columbian coffee is tasty, and very good quality with balanced acidity that makes it very good. By contrast, Brazilian coffee is considered much more mild. Brazil grows both major strains of coffee, arabica in the mountains and robusta where it's happiest, namely on or around sea level. But both varieties of the bean grown in Brazil turn out a nice, low-acidic drink. These are just two examples of coffee. But note the difference between the bean from only a few thousand miles apart.

Some places you might not think of necessarily with regards to coffee are Hawaii and Guatemala. The coffee from here is as different as Columbian coffee is from Yemani. Hawaiian coffee grows in dark, volcanic soil, which gives it a very rich flavor. In fact, Hawaii is the only state of the Union which grows coffee beans, and its coffee is very expensive due to its rarity. Guatemalan coffee, on the other hand, is even less well-known, but worthy of trying sometime. The rough landscape

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