The most famous of all coffee legends dates as far back as 5th-6th century AD. Kaldi, a goat herder, living in what is now modern-day Ethiopia, found his goats dancing with glee under a tree of red berries. Having determined the reason for the goats' excitement to have been the fruit in the tree, he picked some and gave them to a tired looking monk passing by from a local monastery. After drying, boiling the berries, and drinking the beverage made by the fruit, the monk found himself rejuvenated with energy. News of the innovation quickly spread to other monks in the realm who made use of the drink in an effort to stay energized through long hours of evening prayer (Davids 11).

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Botanical evidence points to coffee originating in central Ethiopia where it is still grown today. It is estimated that the spread of coffee began sometime around 525AD following the Ethiopian invasion of Yemen, where it has been successfully cultivated ever since. Coffee became an integral part of religious ceremonies and quickly spread throughout Arabia. Between 1470-1500, these practices reached Mecca and Medina. Soon, people became so fond of the beverage that it became a secular drink, and in the 1530s the first recorded coffee houses appeared in Damascus and Aleppo, modern-day Syria (Ukers Chapter 3).

 

Later in the 16th century, colonists and visitors were drawn to the beverage and the drink slowly began to spread across the European continent. In 1714, Louis XIV of France, an avid coffee drinker, negotiated for a coffee tree to be sent to his botanical garden in Paris. In 1723, French naval officer, Mathieu Gabriel de Clieu, was assigned to transplant one of the coffee plant's seedlings in the new world. Legend tells that the seedling had to survive treacherous storms, a pirate attack, and a lack of freshwater before the ship arrived in Martinique. The seedling was credited with the spread of over 18 million coffee trees within the next 50 years, and to be the parent of most all coffee that eventually spread through the Caribbean, South and Central America (The History of Coffee).