Coffee Absolute
Origin: Ivory Coast, Ethiopia

• Details and product description

  Introduction:

  Shrub with an evergreen foliage and a straight trunk, which can reach 8 to 12 m in the wild state. It lives around 70 years. - The flower is white coloured and has 5 or 6 petals. The pistil that emerges from the cupule is extended by fine eyespots. The shape and the perfume similar to jasmine's resulted in the fact that in the XVIIth century, the coffee tree was named "jasmine of Arabia". The flowers form small heaps with 8 to 15 elements at the leave's base. From this flowers are born so many fruits usually called cherries because of their red colour. The flowers only live some hours. They fade from the fertilizing, but other quickly replace them. Thus, on the same shrub, commonly coexist flowers and fruits. A tree can give more than 30,000 flowers within a year. - The leaves have a lanceolate shape; they are green and shiny on the upper side. As all the Rubiaceae, the leaves grow in opposite pairs on the stem and have stipules. These from robusta are much larger than thoseof arabica. - The fruit: cherry is the common name given to the fruit of the coffee tree, which always contains 2 seeds. The botanists prefer the name "drupe". Green at the beginning, the fruits ripen over several months and become yellow, then red, at last garnet and almost black. 

  History:

  We don't know how it went from Ethiopia to Yemen, but it is sure that Yemeni people were the first coffee growers. Spontaneous coffee trees were discovered only at the end of the XIXth century, in plains of low intertropical regions of Africa. Afterwards they proved to be a great economic interest. From the XVth century the coffee probably started to conquer the world. From Muslim pilgrims who went to Mecca, the coffee spread into Yemen and into all Arabia. Until the beginning of the XVIIth century, only Arabia produces coffee. Around 1690, Dutch sailors introduced the first plants of coffee, native to Moka, into Ceylon and India, then in all Dutch colonies from Asia. Then they brought back plants from Java island to Europe. Particularly, the coffee tree was cultivated in the greenhouses of the botanical garden of Amsterdam. Plants were given to Louis XIV who entrusted them to the botanists of the king's garden, the present "jardin des Plantes" (in Paris). The coffee plant adapted to all the countries of the intertropical convergence zone. It had the advantage to prosper in arid lands. Soon, it made its way to the French colonies: to Martinique, then to Jamaica and finally to Bourbon (present day Reunion), seeded with plants from Mocha, the port from which the best coffee vintage from the high plateau of Yemen came. Then the growing spread in all Latin America. The first amateurs : In the middle of the XVIth century, it was usual to drink coffee in Egypt, Syria, Persia or in Turkey. There were coffee bars in the town of Medina, Cairo, Baghdad, Alexandria, Damascus and Istanbul. It is known that in 1555, two Syrians named Shems and Heleem open in the Talchtacalah area the first coffee bar in Istanbul. Within some years, the town numbered several hundreds. At the same time, the Turkish warriors of Suleiman the Magnificent made known their drink to the people of Balkans, Central Europe, North Africa and Spain. Spreading in Europe : In the middle of the XVIth century, the coffee started from Turkey to conquer Europe. It arrived in Venice for the first time. Until the XVIIth century, the coffee was only a curiosity, reserved to people close to some travellers, who brought it back from Orient. It was also found as a medicine with the apothecarys. In the first half of the XVIIth century, the drink was known in Marseille without doing deals with seeds of coffee. Then, the consumption stretched to Italy, France, England and Germany. In 1644, a merchant ship from Alexandria unloaded its merchandise in Marseille. Ten years later, the first public coffee bar was opened. Around 1669, through the ambassador of the Ottoman Empire in Paris, Soleiman Aga, the drink conquered the Parisian high society. Coffee is native to Ethiopia where it grows wild in the forest. Use of coffee, even for medicinal purposes, is very ancient in Ethiopia, though this usage was not wide spread. Thus, neighboring Crusaders had no knowledge of it. The famous doctor Ibn Baitar, born in Malaga, who traveled through North Africa and Syria at the beginning of the thirteenth century, did not record a word about coffee. Coffee probably started its conquest of the world in the 15th century. By intermediary of the Muslim pilgrims who traveled to Mecca, coffee was spread to Yemen and all of Arabia. Until the beginning of the 17th century, only Arabia produced coffee. Around 1690, Dutch sailors introduced the first coffee plants, originally from Mocha, first to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and then to India, and finally throughout all the Dutch colonies of Asia. They brought back plants from Java to Europe. In 1596, Charles de l'Écluse, also known as Carolus Clusius, one of the most famous Flemish doctors and botanists of his times, received beans from his correspondent Bellus, from which the Egyptians made a drink, called cavé, the original word for coffee. The Dutch would ship coffee seeds from Arabia to Batavia, present day Jakarta, where they were germinated. They then brought the plants back to Amsterdam to the most sophisticated greenhouses of the period, and in 1714, the magistrates from this city sent a plant covered with coffee cherries to Louis XIV. The coffee was planted in the "Jardin des apothicaires" (Apothecary Garden) in Paris. Public places quickly developed for drinking coffee, both in Muslim countries and in France where the first cafes opened in 1672. Origin of the name : Archangel Gabriel, who became the intermediary of Allah, gave as present to Mahomet, a plant from the celestial orchard, able to give him the strenght to create Islam. Mahomet produced a drink from that plant and he named it " qahwah " which means "the stimulant". Do you know that ? : Origin of the first coffee roasting : in Yemen, two monks, Sciadli and Aydrus, were entrusted with the harvest of coffee. On a rainy afternoon, they came back with their waterlogged harvest. To dry the seeds, they put them in a chimney where a good fire was going. Then they went to prayer. When they came back the seeds were more than dried. They were roasted, but they gave a nice smell. In fact, the two monks had discovered the roasting principle.

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