by Carla Martorello

Created on: September 02, 2008   Last Updated: September 21, 2008

Coffee. One of the most famous drinks in the whole world. This wonderful drink, whether you like it or not, has become so widespread that virtually every human being on the planet has either tasted it, smelled it or at least knows what it is. The question is, where does coffee come from? How did it become what it is today? How did it manage to be all over the world? Well, let's go through each one of these questions.

Legend has it that in c850, an Ethiopian goat herder by the name of Kaldi was once looking for his missing goats. They had failed to return to the barn for the night, so he got really worried. He went on a search in the mountains and when he finally found them, he saw an out of the ordinary scene: all of his goats were in a small meadow performing some sort of dance. They were butting each other joyfully. Kaldi was extremely surprised by the scene. That is when he saw some of the goats nibbling on what seemed to be small bright cherries from a tree. Curious enough, he decided to taste one of those cherries himself. To his surprise, he noticed an odd feeling going through his body and suddenly felt full of energy. He then couldn't help joining his goats in their dance.

While Kaldi was dancing, a monk passing by watched the scene and approached the happy shepherd who mentioned to him what had occured. That monk was to find the recipe for preparing the beans inside the cherries by boiling them and then serve the resulting drink to his fellow monks so that they would be able to stay awake and with energy during the long night vigils of prayers.

Of course, that is just the legend. Some people may believe it and some may not. Either way, what some say the true story really is state that evidence indicates that the origin of coffee is Ethiopia, where wild coffee plants keep growing until this day. This means that Ethiopia is the oldest coffee exporter in the world. However, somehow by the 15th century, coffee was being cultivated on the Arabian Peninsula and it was there where it begun its career to fame. Allegedly, the first coffee house was opened in 1471 in Istanbul, Turkey, and it was called Kiva. For many centuries, Arabia was the world's primary source of coffee with a very high demand, especially from Europe. The Arabs were so very protective of their plants that if a European was seen in Arabia with a coffee plant, that constituted a crime punishable by death. Even though the seeds and plants were so highly guarded and no fertile plants were allowed

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