The Origin Story



Having just started at Fortuna Enterprises and experienced my first coffee tasting, I've found myself becoming increasingly curious about coffee both as a product and a culture. Knowing less than I should about where coffee actually came from, I figured it was time to do a bit of research.

Several stories claim to be the true account of coffee's origin. One such story claims that a man, while traveling through Ethiopia, noticed that the local birds were displaying unusual amounts of energy. Upon finding and consuming the berry that he determined to be the source of their energy, he immediately felt the effects himself. He then returned home to sing the praises of his discovery.

A second tale tells of Omar, a shaman of sorts, who found himself exiled to a cave in a barren desert. Starving, Omar attempted to eat a handful of berries growing on a nearby bush. Finding them revoltingly bitter but refusing to quit, Omar became something of a scientist and started to boil the little berries. The resulting liquid replenished his strength, and he was able to make the journey back home. Omar presented his findings, after which his people revoked his exile and - no joke - declared him a saint.

A final account features a flock of goats. Apparently, an Ethiopian goat-herder noticed that his goats were running around a bit faster and more frequently than usual after nibbling on the berries of a nearby bush. Trying them himself and soon feeling the energizing effects, he brought the berries to a monk, who immediately tossed them into a fire. Our hero was devastated. Despite the monk's best efforts to destroy the berries, however, the aroma resulting from the roasting beans gathered a bit of a crowd. The beans were raked from the fire, ground up, and became a local delicacy before eventually reaching the rest of the world.

Despite each story being wildly unverifiable, the location seems to be fairly consistent: Ethiopia. Well, Omar was actually in Yemen, but that's close to Ethiopia. The point is, coffee was first discovered somewhere in the Ethiopia/Yemen region. This was all happening in the first decade of the 1400's.

By 1414, word of this magic drink borne of a simple berry had begun to spread. This "coffee" (though it wasn't called coffee back then) was becoming a hot topic in historical hubs like Mecca, Medina, Cairo, Damascus, Constantinople, etc. The early 1500's saw coffee reaching Egypt and North Africa. The drink made its way to Europe and the Americas in the early half of the 16th century and spread rapidly to the rest of world shortly after.

This 150-200 year period seems a bit long for something as culturally significant as coffee to have made it around the world, right? Well, several factors served to slow the journey of the beans. For starters, the size and relatively undeveloped nature of the starting region at the time made transportation of the beans a bit tough. Then, after years spent conquering that hurdle, coffee was quickly banned in several of the countries it had arrived in due to its strange and seemingly unnatural properties. Of course, some of the delay may also have been to the timeless nature of merchants; hiding sources and dealing in small increments so as to protect and develop their new fortune.

By the turn of the 17th century, coffee had become a worldwide phenomenon. The popularity of the drink has only increased since those early days, and the impact is still fully visible today. You may be a coffee purist, roasting and grinding your own beans into the late hours of the morning, weighing each drop of liquid and using the most precise tools to capture the most perfect, natural taste. Or, you might pick your coffee up from a drive-through with the three spare minutes you have on your drive to work. However you do coffee, always remember that you owe the existence of this important little drink to those long-gone birds, goats, and/or saints of the past.

- Griffin Thomas
Social Media & Publications Specialist
Fortuna Enterprises, LLC

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