History of Coffee: Spreading of Coffee Consumption to England and France

History of Coffee: Spreading of Coffee Consumption to England and France
Around 1580 a physician and renowned botanist Prosper Alpin, who was director of a botanical garden of European plants in Padua (Italy) spent four years in Egypt where he accompanied the Consul of the Republic of Venice.

He studied Egyptian flora and described the coffee tree in his work Plants of Egypt published in Venice in 1592.

He noted that the coffee tree produces a fruit called bon or ban and “that Arabs and Egyptians use it to make a kind of infusion that is popular and that they drink in place of wine. This beverage is called caoua.”

In 1615, Venetian merchants who had come to appreciate the qualities of coffee in Istanbul imported from Mocha into Europe.

In 1660, the first shipment of coffee coming from Alexandria arrived in Marseille and the first coffeehouse there was opened in 1670.

For a short time, Marseille supplied the coffee for all of Europe.

The first coffeehouses were opened in Oxford, England in 1650, in London on 1652, and in Hamburg, Germany in 1677.

However, in 1643 there was already a tavern where coffee was consumed in North America, in the city of New Amsterdam at the site of the present Broadway of New York City.

This café was probably the most famous one in New York, the City Tavern which is presently the Fraunces Tavern.

Many coffeehouses were set up in North America during the 18th century.

In France, the ambassador of the Ottoman Empire, Soliman Aga, who arrived in Paris in 1669, offered coffee to all his guest and thus introduced it to the court and to the French High Society.

In Paris at the Saint-Germain Fair of 1672, an Armenian named Pascal opened the first public café which was called House of Caova that he later transferred to the quai du Lourve.

In 1689, an Italian named Procopio opened a deluxe café which is presently the Procope restaurant in the VIth district of Paris, 13 rue de l’Ancienne-Comedie.

Coffee consumption became widespread at Court during the reign of Louis the XVth. In order to please Madame Du Barry the King was said to have spent fifteen thousand pounds per year “for the good pleasure if these ladies”.

It is at this this time that coffee became popular throughout France.
History of Coffee: Spreading of Coffee Consumption to England and France