The birth
Mystery and legends envelop the “coffee invention”. From the official history it is known that, coffee – the plant – appeared in Caffa, a region of Etiopia, in ancient times. The process of the drink extraction from the plant was unknown at that time. According to a medieval legend, Kaldi, a young Abyssinian shepherd, passing by Caffa with his flock noticed that the goats, grazing on Coffea berries, became particularly lively. He was frightened and went to ask for a suggestion to the friars of an abbey not far from there. The friars, foretelling a diabolic spell, first set fire to the shrubs but, after inhaling the nice aroma coming from the flames, they changed idea. And the they learnt to extract the dark and scented drink from the bushes. An ancient Turkish popular tale relates the coffee birth to the origins of the world! It seems that Allah chose to have some coffee the day of Creation, tea for the following day to make his rest easier and wine the day of the Original Sin. Coffee arrived to humanity when the archangel Gabriel came to help Mohammed, seized with the sleeping sickness during a long religious rite, and gave him the dark drink.