That cup of coffee that you’re enjoying right now started out its life as a handful of seeds, many, many years ago.

Coffee comes from a plant called “Coffea”, of which there are several varieties. The most common (and generally most popular) type is “Coffea arabica”, which comes from Ethiopia and Yeman and is believed to have been the first species of coffee plant ever to be cultivated. It’s thought that the very first coffee drinkers lived somewhere around the ninth century, having discovered the plant in Ethiopia’s highlands (coffee grows best on high ground). From there, it spread across Egypt and Yemen, Europe, and eventually to as far afield as the Americas.

So how does the magic happen? Well, the usual method of planting coffee is to do so at the start of the rainy season, by putting about twenty seeds in each hole. Around half will fail naturally; the rest will often be grown alongside other crops, like beans, corn and rice, for a few years.

Yes, a few years! The coffee tree will grow for around 3-5 years before it ever produces any fruits, and it grows tall – around 3 to 3.5 metres (10 to 12 feet) is normal. In a place with perfect coffee-growing conditions, such as Java coffee is planted all through the year so that there is a continual harvest of the fruits. However, in conditions that are slightly less ideal, such as parts of Brazil, coffee planting is a seasonal affair, and the harvest takes place only at winter time.

As you probably know – or at least can work out from the regions where coffee is produced – the coffee plant likes the sun. It can’t live in cold weather, so it is impossible to grow it an countries where there is a winter frost. However, that’s not to say that full-on sunlight is necessary for coffee crops. In fact, the best coffee is “shade-grown”, as it actually lives for up to twice as long as the  coffee varieties grown in full sun and is often thought to have a much more developed, higher quality flavour. This is quite a controversial issue. The problem is that shade-grown coffee takes much longer to cultivate, and so it is common to clear large areas using deforestation in order to establish more efficient “full-sun” plantations instead. Aside from the environmental issues associated with deforestation, the full-sun plantation crops depletes significantly more of the soil’s resources than shade-grown coffee, so there are often campaigns to encourage coffee lovers to buy shade-grown instead.

When the jasmine-like flowers on the coffee plant blossom, the berry-like fruits appear, and these take around nine months to ripen. When they’re ready, they’re picked and dried to form what we know as green coffee beans. They then have to be roasted before you can grind them and turn them into your favourite hot beverage, be that a rich espresso or a frothy cappucino – and the key to a really fresh cup of coffee is to shorten the length of time between the green coffee bean being roasted and you drinking the resulting coffee. That’s why so many coffee fans choose to purchase green beans instead of pre-roasted ones – the coffee remains completely fresh, retaining its unique blend of flavours until roasted, so you have complete control over when this happens and even the level of roast you choose to give your coffee!

And that’s the journey of coffee: from a handful of seeds in somewhere like Ethiopia or Brazil, to the luxurious café noir you enjoy first thing in the morning. No wonder coffee has that rich, exotic taste we’ve come to crave…

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