A Seven Hundred Year Love Affair with Coffee

In his 1935 book, All About Coffee, William Ukers summarizes in dramatic tones: “All nations do it homage. It has become recognized as a human necessity…Coffee has an important place in the rational dietary of all the civilized people of Earth. It is a democratic beverage. Not only is it the drink of fashionable society, but it is also the favorite beverage of the men and women who do the world’s work…It has been termed ‘the most grateful lubricant known to the human machine’ and the ‘most delightful taste in all nature.’ ” Maybe a bit exaggerated but his point is well taken. 

Coffee is the most common, frequently imbibed drink on the Earth. And it’s been that way for some seven centuries.

In fact botanists suspect the original coffee species once grew throughout Africa but disappeared in most places during the Ice Age. There are two main strains of coffee: Coffea Arabica and Coffea canephora var, Robusta, native to the Congo and Angola.

C. Arabica is the basis of all premium coffees. It’s an arid-climate plant of the gardenia strain. Like the wine grape, it produces a drink whose flavor is greatly affected by soil and climate. The Robusta plant, by contrast, is a fast-growing jungle plant, chiefly grown in the Ivory Coast, the Philippines, Zaire and Java. Robusta, which has been used only since 1940, is primarily a source of caffeine – its flavor is acid and its aroma is coarse, like rank hay. It is much used in canned and particularly in freeze-dried coffee.

Arabica can be grown only within 25 degrees of the Equator because if the temperature changes more than 20 degrees a day, production plummets. Preferably it is grown in highlands where temperatures don’t get above 70 degrees; the better coffees nearly all come from higher elevations because with the lower temperatures and the longer ripening season, flavor elements become more complex and bitterness is less pronounced. High-grown coffees are also as much as 40% lower in caffeine. High grown coffee is also more expensive because a lot of hand labor is inevitable.

“As with so many other foods, coffee offers examples of free markets and free minds at work, of people making life better for everyone at no one else’s expense. It is one of the most popular beverages in the world and has been around longer, and teaches more lessons, than most of us might expect. A brief reading of its history might even serve to reeducate our political leaders in the benefits of freedom and the folly of centralized anything.”

Excerpts from: PriceCostco Connection, February 1995 “Hot Coffee!” Brad Edmonds www.lewrockwell.com/edmonds Los Angeles Times, Sept. 12, 1991 The Coffee Revolution

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