I begin this blog with a strong cup of black coffee. Espresso actually, straight up with no sugar. How is it you might ask that anyone can drink that mud? I’m not sure actually. It’s an acquired taste developed over years of practice, and/or addiction some might say.
Regardless, I enjoy coffee and used it as a unifying element in my book, between the ancient and modern day stories. I figured, everyone likes coffee. And people have been drinking it since the beginning of time, right? Wrong, I learned when I was in the final editing phase of my book and decided I better research the question. Most sources I found suggest coffee was discovered as a drink 575 AD when a goatherder noticed his flock would not sleep after eating certain red berries. Finding them bitter to his taste, the herdsman threw them into his campfire from which arose a rich and pleasant aroma. Intrigued, he ground the roasted beans into a powder, which he found quite good as a drink when combined with boiling water.
As you can imagine, this knowledge was of great distress to me as I had several characters in my tale, enjoying the brew in the year 262 AD! But I continued to dig and eventually found a source which mentioned much dispute revolving around the question of which came first-coffee or tea. That source also claimed tea is documented as a drink during the mid-third century, and that was all I needed to leave my story alone. In any case, I love coffee and without giving too much away I’ll ask, “Who’s to say the first coffee shop wasn’t opened by a burly man with a mischievous smile in ancient Ephesus and then destroyed by barbarians, with the drink being rediscovered some three hundred years later by a goatherder? One can always speculate…
Tell me what you think, and more importantly, how you like your coffee?
Mark Abel Writer 
I love the fact that you researched the history of coffee and tea. Sign of a good author for sure. Oh i’m positive coffee came first! 🙂 I love my espresso with sugar, dark chocolate, a splash of brandy and milk foam on top! I loved the coffee references in the book. Some good tongue and cheek and an accurate picture of us humans as lovers of habit and ritual. 🙂 Good job!
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The small pleasures in life, I think we agree, are the best. A good cup of coffee, the morning sun in your face, (when the weather is good), and maybe a good book in your hands, Ha!
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I have heard the goat herder was named Kaldi, at least in some versions. So, one will occasionally see a Kaldi’s Blend available in coffee houses. Good to hear your research worked out. I had to do a bit for my historical fiction coffee novel as well, but I only to to as far back as 1992! Thanks!
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