About Coffee. Learn the history of the coffee bean.

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Featured Coffee of the Month! This outstanding coffee is grown in the famous Blue Mountain range in the island of Jamaica. The mountains reach up to approximately 7,402 feet which make coffee grown on these peaks one of the highest altitude grown coffees plants in the world. Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee has an incredible mix high rainfall good soil drainage, rich volcanic soil, and cool and misty mountain conditions. Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee expert coffee farmers have a history of care and stringent quality control grows the smoothest, richest and best gourmet coffee in the world.

Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee is probably of the most popular and in demand coffees in the world. This "Rolls-Royce of coffee" has been popular with coffee connoisseurs from around the world for more than the last two centuries. Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee is famous for its intense bold aroma, good acidity, exquisite flavor, a clean and refined taste, an unusual sweetness and an excellent body.

Kona Coffee

Kona Coffee is a cultural tradition that's been carried on since Samuel Ruggles first brought arabica coffee to Kona in 1828. This plant was amazingly adaptable to all situations in the Kona area. Even in the beginning Americans and Europeans realized what a wonderful marriage took place between Arabica coffee and Kona's calm, unique climate and rich volcanic soil.

Prior to 1000 AD

History tells us that other Africans, from the same era as the Kaldi legend, fueled themselves upon protein-rich coffee and animal fat balls and unwound with wine made from the coffee-berry pulp.

1000 AD The drinking of coffee soon spread to Arabia, most likely by Arab traders, and by the end of the 9th Century, a drink known as "qahwa" (literally meaning "that which prevents sleep") was being made by boiling beans.

1453

Coffee is introduced to Constantinople (later Istanbul) by the Ottoman Turks. The world's first coffee shop, Kiva Han, opens there in 1475. Turkish law makes it legal for a woman to divorce her husband if he fails to provide her with a daily quota of coffee.

1600

Coffee, introduced to the West by Italian traders, grabs attention in high places. In Italy, Pope Clement VIII is urged by his advisers to consider the favorite drink of the Ottoman Empire part of the infidel threat. One sip, however, and he decides to baptize it instead, making it an acceptable Christian beverage.

1607

Captain John Smith helps to found the colony of Virginia at Jamestown; it is believed that he introduced coffee to North America. 1645 First coffee house opens in Italy.

1690

With a coffee plant smuggled out of the Arab port of Mocha, the Dutch become the first to transport and cultivate coffee commercially, in Ceylon - and in their East Indian colony of Java, source of the brew's nickname.

1713

The Dutch unwittingly provide Louis XIV of France with a coffee bush whose descendants will produce the entire western coffee industry when in 1723 French naval officer Bariel Mathieu deClieu steals a seedling and transports it to Martinique. Within 50 years an official survey records 19 million coffee trees on Martinique. Eventually 90 percent of the world's coffee spreads from this plant.

1727

The Brazilian coffee industry gets its start when Lieutenant Colonel Francisco de Melo Palheta is sent by his government to arbitrate a border dispute between the French and Dutch colonies in Guiana. Not only does he settle the dispute, he also strikes up a secret liaison with the wife of French Guiana's governor. Although France guarded its new world coffee plantations to prevent cultivation from spreading, the lady said goodbye to Palheta with a bouquet in which she hid cuttings and fertile seeds of coffee.

1732

Johann Sebastian Bach composes his Kaffee Kantate.

1733

The Boston Tea Party makes drinking coffee a patriotic duty in America.

1815

Coffee beans were first planted in The Hawaiian Islands by Kamehameha the Great's Spanish interpreter and Physician Don Francisco de Paula y Marin. Marin's plantings were unsuccessful.

1825

Coffee was successfully introduced into Hawaii when in 1825 King Kamehameha II and his wife, and a royal party that included Governor Boki of Oahu, made a state visit to England. The party was beset with measles and the King and Queen both died. While bringing the bodies back to Hawaii, Governor Boki stopped in Rio de Janiero to pick up a number of coffee plants. After returning to Hawaii and having John Wilkinson, a former West Indian planter, plant the trees, the planting stock for the Hawaiian Islands had begun.

1827

After having successfully planted a small field of coffee, Wilkinson died. Others saw the potential of the coffee in the Islands and used seed and cuttings from this small field to begin coffee plantings in other valleys and in other areas around the islands.

1828

Reverend Samuel Ruggles took slips from Wilkinson's field and transported them to Kona making the first plantings at Naole, near Kealakekua Bay. They were planted as ornamental garden plants.

1842

The first commercial venture to produce coffee occurred not in Kona, but in Hanalei on the island of Kauai. In 1845 the venture exported the first 245 pounds of coffee ever from Hawaii, but labor shortages, a drought and a blight put the operation of our business by 1855.

1870

The peak in coffee production on the Big Island of Hawaii happened during this period. Over 415,000 pounds of coffee were exported. Soon after this period, coffee production suffered due to sugar dominance as the Hawaiian crop of choice and the presence of the white scale blight that attacked the coffee crops.

1890

For a short while, interest in commercial coffee cultivation was revived. This was due to the introduction of the Australian ladybird beetle that effectively controlled white blight and the political changes that made more coffee production land available.

1899

The world coffee market crashes. 1900 Hills Bros. Begins packing roast coffee in vacuum tins. Between 1900 and 1945 donkeys were used as basic transportation in Kona, especially for transporting 100-pound bags of ripe coffee cherry out of the rugged coffee lands up or down to the main road for transport to coffee mills. Dubbed "Kona Nightingales" because of their musical braying, the noble donkey played a vital role in the Kona coffee industry.

1901

The first soluble instant coffee is invented.

1903

German coffee importer Ludwig Roselius turns over a batch of ruined coffee beans to researchers, who perfect the process of removing caffeine from the beans without destroying the flavor.

1906

George Constant Washington, an English chemist notices a powdery condensation forming on the spout of his silver coffee carafe. After experimentation, he creates the first mass-produced instant coffee.

1940

The US imports 70 percent of the world coffee crop.

1945

Achilles Gaggia perfects the espresso machine with a piston that creates a high pressure extraction to produce a thick layer of crema.

1991

Caffè Carissimi Canada, a network of espresso service providers is formed in Canada, modeled after a visit to Franco Carissimi (roaster and equipment manufacturer) in Bergamo Italy. It becomes the fastest growing network of private and independant super automatic machines providers in Canada.

1995

Coffee is the worlds most popular beverage. More than 400 billion cups are consumed each year. It is a world commodity that is second only to oil.