According to legend, our love affair with coffee began in the forests of Ethiopia around AD850, when a goat herder noticed his herd was unusually energetic after eating the bright red berries of a particular tree. Intrigued, he tried one himself – and soon saw what all the fuss was about. Keen to share his discovery, the herder took some of the berries to a nearby monastery. Initially the monks were wary and discarded the berries on a fire. However, their disinterest quickly turned to desire when the warm, fruity aroma of roasting beans began to fill the air. After rescuing the beans from the fire, they crafted the world’s first cup of joe … and the rest, as they say, is history.
When coffee first became widely popular, in the 17th and 18th centuries, consumers are likely to have had to drink what was given to them, regardless of how black and gritty. How things have changed. Nowadays specialty coffee is king, with its focus on origin, quality and flavour, and most of us have a favourite artisan serve, with personal preferences covering everything from the kind of milk used and its temperature, to the grind of the beans and how they’re brewed. The downside to this is that making a cup of coffee has become a skilled process, which often requires us to leave the house and find a barista with the right training and equipment to pull it off.
