The origin of coffee mocha

By the time of the 15th century, Sufi monks in Yemen had begun cultivating, drinking, and producing coffee for trade. Coffee later became the accepted drink of the Arab world. For a long time, it was traded locally. When the Ottoman Turks occupied Yemen in 1536, the coffee bean became an important export, cultivated and shipped from the port of Al-Makha until the late 19th century. In 1555, it was introduced to the city of Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey).

By the early seventeenth century, Italian traders had introduced coffee to the West. Other countries soon followed Italy’s example. As the coffee trade grew, traders moved nearer to the coffee-producing countries. Al-Makha on the coast of Yemen became the centre of the world’s coffee trade for 150 years.

Later coffee from Al-Makha began to be referred to simply as Mocha coffee. The term “mocha’ originally referred to coffee that was grown on the Arabian Peninsula and shipped from the Yemeni port of Mocha. The history of this word’s use is fairly muddled. It is likely most Europeans tasted coffee before chocolate.
The origin of coffee mocha