COFFEE LIFE  

Coffee is a beverage  prepared from the roasted or baked seeds of several species of an evergreen shrub. The two most common sources of coffee beans are the highly regarded Coffea arabica, and the "robusta" form of the hardier Coffea canephora. Coffee plants are cultivated in more than 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Once ripe, coffee"berries" are picked, processed and dried to yield the seeds inside. The seeds are then roasted to varying degrees, depending on the desired flavor, before being ground and brewed to create coffee.

Myth: Kaldi was an Ethiopian goatherd who discovered the coffee plant, according to popular legend.. Kaldi, noticing that when his flock nibbled on the bright red berries of a certain bush they became more energetic (jumping goats), chewed on the fruit himself. His exhilaration prompted him to bring the berries to an Islamic monk in a nearby monastery, but the monk disapproved of their use and threw them into a fire, from which an enticing aroma billowed. The roasted beans were quickly raked from the embers, ground up, and dissolved in hot water, yielding the world's first cup of coffee.

BRIEF HISTORY:

   

The earliest credible evidence of either coffee drinking or knowledge of the coffee tree appears in the middle of the 15th century, in the Sufi Muslim monasteries around Mocha in Yemen. It was here in Arabia that coffee seeds were first roasted and brewed, in a similar way to how it is now prepared. By the 16th century, it had reached the rest of the Middle East, Persia, Turkey, and northern Africa. Coffee seeds were first exported from Ethiopia to Yemen. Yemen traders brought coffee back to their homeland and began to cultivate the seed. The first coffee smuggled out of the Middle East was by Sufi Baba Budan from Yemen to India in 1670. Before then, all exported coffee was boiled or otherwise sterilised. Portraits of Baba Budan depict him as having smuggled seven coffee seeds by strapping them to his chest. The first plants grown from these smuggled seeds were planted in Chikmagalur.Coffee then spread to Italy, and to the rest of Europe, to Indonesia, and to the Americas.

It is derived by  Italian  word caffe. There are many terms used in Arabic and Turkish language. Here in India, the local slang of calling South Indian Filter Coffee is Kaapi.

In the United States, September 29 is celebrated as "National Coffee Day."