Feb 15, 2023 3 min read

Have you had your cup of morning coffee yet? I like to enjoy about two mugs full of hot coffee with just a touch of cream every morning. Though the caffeine surely gives us a jolt of energy, part of me thinks the ritual, the delicious aroma and the comfort of consuming a hot liquid is what makes coffee such a wonderful start to the morning.

Who discovered coffee anyway? I wondered this aloud the other night trying to envision a caveman plucking beans and boiling water over a fire. Someone somewhere at some time got the bright idea to boil water and drop various plants into it. Brilliant!

Since the cavemen didn’t seem a likely source for coffee, I turned to the internet for some answers. According to the National Coffee Association (NCA), no one knows for certain how or when coffee was discovered. Some legends trace its heritage back centuries to a goat herder on the Ethiopian plateau who noticed his goats would stay awake all night after eating berries from a certain tree. The legend says he shared the information with the local monastery where the abbot made a drink from the berries and enjoyed being alert through evening prayers.

The organization credits the Arabian Peninsula with cultivating coffee by the 15th century in the Yemeni region and later in Persia, Egypt, Syria and Turkey. Even way back then, the group says coffeehouses became social gathering spots for music and conversation. European travelers brought the drink back home by the 17th century where it became popular but also was condemned by clergy in Venice in 1615 as the “bitter invention of Satan.” Pope Clement VIII intervened, tasted the hot brew and gave it his blessing.

Here’s a funny tidbit from NCA: In Europe, coffee eventually replaced common breakfast drinks of beer and wine since coffee drinkers felt more alert and produced better work results! If I drank wine for breakfast, I’d never even make it into work! London coffeehouses charged only a penny for a cup in the mid-17th century (you hear that, Starbucks?), though tea was more popular in the New World. Heavy taxation and the Boston Tea Party in 1773 changed that as colonists switched to coffee and never looked back.

These days, coffee seems to be more popular than ever with hot and cold varieties and all of those fancy variations with steamed milk and foam. I still just like a plain old cup of joe with a touch of cream. So, while I sip my steamy, bitter, tasty morning cup of java, I’ll raise my mug to those goats in Ethiopia all those centuries ago and to their farmer and his friends at the monastery for bringing us such a wonderful way to wake up each day.

Kristin Emery can be reached at kristinemery1@yahoo.com.