Coffee: The forbidden potion

Whether or not you enjoy a cup of coffee, you have to respect the little green bean for making its lively way into so many cultures around the world.

In Ethiopia, the coffee ceremony is one of the most recognizable parts of the culture. Usually conducted by one woman, dressed in the traditional Ethiopian costume, the ceremony is performed for visitors, whatever the time of day. It is a long, involved process and can take several hours.

According to legend, it all began when Kaldi, a sheepherder in the Kaffa region of Ethiopia, noticed that his herd became hyperactive after eating the berries of a particular plant. So Kaldi chewed a few, and soon he was buzzing around the meadow, too. The beans made their way to Yemen, which adopted the same legend, putting their own stamp of discovery on it by changing the name from Kaldi to Shaikh ash-Shadhile, a Sufi mystic. Coffee became very popular among the Sufi's, probably because it helped them stay awake during their lengthy meditations and prayers.

Historically, it is  known that prior to 1000 C.E. Ethiopian Oromo warriors ground coffee beans in animal fat to eat while on raiding excursions. At some point, the Arabs boiled the ground beans to create a hot drink, and in 1453 the first coffee shop opened in Constantinople. The plant was widely cultivated, but realizing its monetary potential, its export was banned beyond Arabic borders-with the exception of exports to wealthy Venetians in Italy where the first coffee house opened in 1645.

By 1675 there were more than 3,000 coffee houses in England, but women were banned from entering them. Perhaps it was by their own choosing, a women's petition against their coffee-drinking husbands called it the "newfangled, abominable, heathenish liquor."

They were not the only ones to view it with suspicion. In 1511 conservative imams in Mecca forbade its consumption but they were too late; it was so popular that in 1524 the ban was repealed. Egypt had a similar ban. Some Christians called it the devil's drink and wanted the pope to ban the Muslim drink. But Pope Clement VIII tasted it, liked it, and supposedly remarked that it would be a shame to let "the infidels have exclusive use of it," so he "baptized" it to make it an acceptable Christian beverage. Even the Ethiopian Orthodox Church took its turn banning coffee because it was perceived as belonging to the Muslims. Again, it was too late: Emperor Menelik enjoyed "buna" and another Ethiopian, Abuna Matewos, helped dispel the idea that it was only a Muslim drink.

In 1690 the Dutch smuggled coffee plants to Java; in 1713 a Frenchman stole a seedling and planted it in Martinique; and a few years later the wife of a French governor in Guiana said farewell to her South American lover with a bouquet with a kick-she hid forbidden coffee seedlings in the flowers. It was soon energizing most of the world.

Today Brazil is the largest producer of coffee beans, growing about one-third of the world's production. By 1940 the United States imported about 70% of the world's coffee beans.

And in 1971, Starbucks opened its first store in Seattle..

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