Not many people are aware that coffee grows on trees. One may be surprised to find that the small green coffee beans are contained within bright red coffee cherries, which look like red grapes. Each cherry usually contains only two precious coffee beans.

It is believed that the birthplace of the Coffee Arabica shrub is situated in the region of Mocha, Yemen. The Yemenites were the first coffee growers. The coffee drink spread from Yemen to all over Arabia with the Arab pilgrims making their way to Mecca, and through the Yemeni traders, it reached Ethiopia. The Yemeni traders introduced the coffee tree seedlings and the drink into Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), then India, and from there to Java and other Asian countries.

Up until the 18th century, only Mocha in Yemen and Ethiopia produced Arabica coffee. Today the countries producing Arabica coffee are to be found on the American continent and the East coast of Africa as well as in India and Papua New Guinea. Arabica coffee represents three-quarters of the world’s coffee production.

The world’s first recorded historic coffee house, Kiva Han, was reputedly opened in Istanbul. Shemsi (from Damascus) and Hakem (from Aleppo) are generally acknowledged as the first coffee house proprietors, having opened one in Talchtacalah, Istanbul, in 1555. Since then, the coffee house was largely a center of social interaction and traditionally a place where men would assemble to drink coffee and entertain themselves with conversation, music, reading, and playing chess.

Up until the middle of the 15th century, coffee was consumed in Egypt, Syria, Persia, Turkey, Spain, and North Africa. Coffee shops were to be found in the cities of Medina, Cairo, Baghdad, Alexandria, and Damascus. Around the same time, Sulaiman the Magnificent Turkish warriors introduced the drink to the inhabitants of the Balkans and Central Europe and landed first in Venice.

Around 1669, thanks to Suliman Aga, the ambassador of the Ottoman Empire in Paris, the drink became known in French high society. In the first half of the 17th century, the drink was known only in Venice and Marseille. In 1644 a ship from Alexandria (Egypt) unloaded its cargo at Marseille. The first European public café was opened in the city ten years later.

During the latter half of the 17th century consumption spread to Italy, France, England, and Germany. Late in the 17th century, Dutch sailors brought coffee seedlings to Amsterdam and subsequently offered them to Louis XIV, who entrusted them to the botanists of the King's Garden (now the “Jardin des plantes").

From there, coffee trees were introduced into the Caribbean colonies, which supplied large quantities to France. The cultivation of coffee then spread through the whole of Latin America, which is the world's biggest producer today.