Ahhhhh, coffee... a fantastic dark beverage that wakes us up \rin the morning. For some of us, it keeps us up during the day,\ror for late night study sessions. We drink it out of habit,\rwe drink it from addiction, we drink it for flavor; whatever\rthe reason, it is surely a popular beverage. So where did\rthis famed drink come from?

Coffee, for Americans, is three hundred years old. In the\rEast it was widespread at every level of society, since the\rearlier era. The most notable dates point to around\r800b.c. However, Homer, and according to Arabian tales \rspeak\rof a mysterious bitter black beverage with powers of\rstimulation that could have been this drink.

About the year 1000, coffee was being used for medicinal\rpurposes. In 1400 a Yemeni goat herder observed his flock\reating reddish berries, then becoming excited and restless.\rAfter relating his observations to a monk, they boiled\rthe berries and made a beverage that could disperse\rsleep and weariness. No matter how it actually was\rcreated, the fact remains that the coffee plant\rstarted in Africa, in an Ethiopian region known as Kaffa.\rFrom there it spread to Egypt, Yemen, and Arabia, where it\rbecame a part of daily life.

In the late 1500s coffee was a commodity, being sold in\rEurope. However, due to an increasing demand for the new\rbeverage, and high taxes on shipping, there was\rexperimentation with growing the crops in various other\rcountries. Much later, around 1727 coffee growing started in\rNorthern Brazil. By the 20th century, various forms of\rcoffee were developed for the public.

Decaffeinated coffee was first founded in 1903 when \rLudwig Roselius, a German coffee importer, gave a batch of\rdamaged coffee beans to researchers. They developed the\rprocess of taking the caffeine out of the beans without\rlosing any flavor. This was marketed in the 1920s.

Instant coffee was first mass produced from the invention of\rGeorge Constant Washington, an English chemist living in\rGuatemala. While waiting for his wife one day to join him\routside for coffee, he observed on the spout of the silver\rcoffee urn, a fine powder, which looked to be the\rcondensation of the coffee vapors. This excited him and\rled to his founding of soluble coffee.

In 1906 he started experiments and put his invention, Red E\rCoffee, in the markets in 1909. Nestle', in 1938, trying to\raid Brazil with their coffee surpluses created freeze-dried\rcoffee. Nescafe was started and first introduced into\rSwitzerland. Instant coffee became a fad after 1956 when\rcommercial television was the new craze.

And now in the US alone, 400 billion cups of coffee a year\rare consumed. Coffee is one of the world's largest\rcommodities, second only to oil. From a remote area in\rAfrica, to millions of shelves and homes worldwide, coffee\rhas became a fixture everywhere.

The author has been a passionate coffee drinker for many \ryears. She has tasted coffees from all over the world, and \rbelieves in serving and entertaining her guests with only the \rbest.

She has catered hundreds of events and affairs and is \rknown for her attention to details, especially regarding \rpicking the perfect coffee.

Irene D. Hope is founder of All Special Coffee an \rexcellent resource site dedicated to information about \rcoffee.