Posts Tagged ‘history’
A brief History of Coffee
As beverages go coffee in it’s present form has only been around for about six centuries, while tea and wine go back several thousand years. The tradition of flavoring and sweetening coffee goes back to the era when coffee was first drunk in the Middle East and Europe, for instance Cafe au Vin, a recipe of which dared to blend port wine and french roast coffee was one of the ways in which coffee was first savored. At the time, the only sweetener used was Cardamon. Cardamon comes from the seeds of a ginger-like plant which imparts it’s sweet, spicy flavor to the coffee. The original Arabic word for coffee was in fact the same word used for wine ” Qahwah”. Cafe au Vin brings out the fruity complexity of the coffee and the coffee adds a full bodied yet silken texture to the amazing taste.
In Vienna, coffee’s first stop in Europe, shopkeepers served complex coffee drinks which included steamed milk, whipped cream, cinnamon, vanilla, and chocolate. Which gives us the present day incarnations of our espresso based drinks.