The Coffee Origins
The coffee origins aren't well known, probably spread first in the Arab world and then arrive in Europe.
The term coffee derives from the Arabic word quahwa which originally identified a drink extracted from the juice of some seeds, which provoked exciting and stimulating effects.
The Turkish word quahvè is also relevant, hence the term in Italian coffee.
Instead, coffee is thought to derive from the region of Caffa, in south-western Ethiopia, where the coffee plant is grown.
In the fifteenth century, the knowledge of coffee spread in the Middle East up to Istanbul, where its consumption took place in the meeting places of the time, in rooms similar to taverns where the Turks used to sit and consume this drink.
Venice was the first to introduce coffee in Italy, and all these thanks to its relations with the East: the first coffee shops appeared in 1645.
In the seventeenth century, coffee spread in England and in France and since then the growth was exponential, so much so that in the eighteenth century every city in Europe had at least one coffee.
In Italy, coffee consumption is less than half that of Northern Europe, but coffee has almost always been a national symbol.
Since the 1700s in Naples a variant of Turkish coffee was established: instead of cooking the powder of ground beans, as it is still done today in Turkey and North Africa, mixing it in water in a copper pot resting on embers or warm sand, Neapolitan cooking spread. This method involved filtering boiling water poured from above through coffee powder: this is the principle that makes cuccumella work.
In 1902, in Milan, the espresso was born, thanks to the invention of the engineer Luigi Bezzera: a machine that used high pressure to filter the ground. Finally, in the mocha, set up by the entrepreneur Alfonso Bialetti in 1933, the boiling water rises from the bottom.
The coffee origins have known ups and downs, epochal changes and different preparation procedures, but the love for this drink has been and will always remain great and immutable.