A Short History of Coffee: From Ethiopia to the World

Coffee's story begins with wild coffee trees in Ethiopia's Kaffa region. By the 15th century, coffee had crossed the Red Sea to Yemen, where it spread among Sufi orders as a drink that helped devotees stay awake during worship.

Yemen's port of Mokha was, for a long time, the center of the world's coffee trade — which is where today's use of the word 'mocha' comes from. By the 16th century, coffee had reached the great cities of the Ottoman Empire, especially Istanbul, and quickly became an essential part of public life.

Istanbul's first coffeehouses weren't just places to drink coffee — they were where poetry, music, chess and political debate happened. This culture traveled to Europe in the 17th century; coffeehouses opening in Venice, London and Paris quickly became centers of intellectual life.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, European colonial powers carried coffee cultivation to the Caribbean and to Central and South America. The coffee history of Brazil, today the world's largest producer, traces back to this period.

In the second half of the 20th century, the rise of instant coffee made coffee mass-market once again; the 'third wave' movement that began in the 1990s turned coffee back into a craft by putting origin, processing and roasting front and center. Small roasteries like Kimor work as part of that third-wave tradition — our goal is to make every batch traceable from origin to cup.