A story about coffee and the island of Java! With Sjoerd Bracke (@sjoerdbracke)
A story about coffee and the island of Java, Indonesia.
With Sjoerd Bracke (@sjoerdbracke)
By now you are familiar with the natural beauty of Java. But, did you know that Java is also home to one of the best coffees in the world? Did you ever wonder why?
The native origin of coffee is thought to have been Ethiopia. It is believed that the Ethiopian ancestors of today’s Oromo ethnic group were the first to have recognized the energizing effect of the native coffee plant. This was back in the early 15th century.
Coffee was primarily consumed in the islamic world, where it originated. Its consumption had strong bonds with religious practices. Actually, the religious people of Yemen, for instance, drank coffee in order to concentrate and as a “kind of spiritual intoxication when they chanted the name of God.” But, as you can imagine, they also used the coffee to keep themselves alert during their nighttime devotions.
In the early 1500s coffee began to spread across North Africa, reaching Egypt and eventually the city of Mocha, in Yemen.
Does the word Mocha sound familiar?
You may relate the word Mocha to a certain type of coffee beverage. And you are right. But, Mocha was originally one of the most famous marketplaces for coffee from the 15th century until the early 18th century! The Mocha beans were known for their unique flavor which made them considerably more expensive. Today, we can still enjoy of this distinctive bean. By the way, “the coffee itself did not grow in Mocha, but was transported from places inland to the port in Mocha, where it was shipped abroad.”
It was in this vast market where Europeans began to gather in order to find the most selected beans, as well as the strongest live coffee trees. It is said that a Dutch merchant known as Pieter van de Broecke “obtained some of the closely guarded coffee bushes from Mocha, Yemen, in 1616. He took them back to Amsterdam and found a home for them in the Botanical gardens, where they began to thrive. This apparently minor event received little publicity, but was to have a major impact on the history of coffee.”
Interestingly, the beans acquired by the Dutch merchant adjusted pretty well to the greenhouses of Amsterdam. Around 1658 numerous coffee arabica bushes were being produced and eventually distributed to other countries, such as Sri Lanka and India for instance. However, the Dutch “abandoned these cultivations to focus on their Javanese plantations in order to avoid lowering the price by oversupply.”
“Within a yew years, the Dutch colonies (Java in Asia and Suriname in the Americas) had become the main suppliers of coffee to Europe.”
In the case of Java, this was possible because the island is geographically and climatologically well-suited for coffee plantations, near the equator and with numerous interior mountainous regions. As a result, in the 17th Java became the center of cultivation and exportation of coffee trees in Indonesia. Although West Java was the region where the earliest coffee plantations were established, the stocks began to spread towards the central part, eventually reaching parts of East Java. Today, it is in Eastern Java and around landscapes like this one shown in the following video where the major plantations of coffee can be found.
Since 2014, Indonesia is the fourth-largest producer of coffee in the world, while Java is known to produce primarily the higher valued Arabica variety in the world. Its famous arabica coffee production is centered on the Ijen Plateau, at the eastern end of Java, at an altitude of more than 1,400 meters.
So, if your plan is to visit this marvelous region of Indonesia, don’t forget to try some Javanese coffee! Most likely, one of the most selected coffees in the world!
