Latin America

The first Latin American coffee where cultivated at Dutch colony of Surinam in 1718.

In 1714 the Dutch gave a coffee plant to the French government. 9 years later in 1723 a French naval officer, Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu, took one of the Dutch seedlings from the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, he then nursed this delicate plant on a trans-atlantic journey, sharing his limited supply of water with the coffee plant. Upon arrival in Martinique he planted this seedling which flourished, this one plant is probably where much of the worlds current coffee supply is derived.

Three years later coffee was introduced to Brazil due to a border dispute between French & Dutch Guiana. Francisco de Melho Palheta, a Portuguese Brazilian official was asked to adjudicate, whilst there he seduced and slept with the French governor’s wife, upon his departure he was presented with a bunch of flowers, with some coffee seeds disguised in side.
The coffee seeds he planted in his home region of Para flourished. Coffee started to spread southward and by 1845, Brazil was the largest coffee producer in the world this is still true today, accounting for approximately 35% of the world’s coffee.

In 1730 the British introduced coffee to Jamaica, where today the most famous and probbly the expensive coffee in the world is grown in the Blue Mountains.

Coffee was introduced to Guatemala in 1760 by European settlers, but was not cultivated until forty years later. In the early 1800s, Guatemala’s indigo plantations were devastated by locusts, and fifty years later, the invention of chemical dyes in Europe made indigo production in Guatemala unprofitable. The government began at this time to provide economic incentives to encourage the production of coffee as a commercial good, and in 1859 approximately 400 quintales (quintal=100lb.) of coffee were exported to Europe. In 1860, coffee exports nearly tripled to 1100 quintales, and in 1868 the government instated a program that distributed more than one million seedlings to rural farmers.

Guatemala currently produces around 5% of the world’s coffee, of which nearly half is gourmet quality.

The tiny republic of Costa Rica received its first coffee seedlings from Cuba in 1779, it had no idea that coffee would become so vital to its economy. Currently the ninth largest coffee producer in the world, Costa Rica coffee is renowned for their exceptionally high quality. To show how serious Costa Rica takes its coffee, there is a law that bans the cultivation of the lower quality Robusta coffee plant. As a result, the only coffee grown in Costa Rica is the more premium Arabica coffee plants, predominantly grown around the capital of San Jose.

Coffee was first planted in Mexico in the late 1700s. Mexican coffee is generally uncomplicated and is used as a base for blending. Mexican coffee beans are typically light bodied and nutty, but can have a heavier body, brighter acidity, and overtones of chocolate. The most popular coffee varietals are cultivated are Bourbon, Mundo Novo, Caturra, and Maragogype.

As the third largest coffee producer in the world, Columbia coffee is one of the most drank coffee in America. Accounting for approximately 12% of the world’s coffee supply, Columbia’s economy heavily relies on its coffee trade. Once renowned for their exceptionally high quality, Columbia’s coffee growing industry originated in 1808 when the first coffee seedlings were brought over the French Antilles to Columbia by Jesuit Missionaries.

By 1825, South and Central America were on track towards their coffee destiny. That date is also important as it was when coffee was first planted in Hawaii which produces the only US coffee, and one of the finest.