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While
discussing the incredible popularity of specialty
coffee and gourmet chocolate some time ago, we were
struck by the similarities between the two beans
that people have fallen deeply in love with over
the centuries – the coffee bean and the cocoa
bean. The coffee bean is used to make the world’s
most popular beverage, while the cocoa bean is used
to make what is arguably the world’s most
beloved food – chocolate. A look at the history
of both these natural gifts reveals interesting,
almost fateful similarities. Chocolate began in
the Americas in ancient times with the Mayans and
Aztecs as a royal drink. This bitter concoction
first traveled across the ocean with Cortez and
initially gained popularity with the Spanish aristocracy,
then later throughout Europe. During this entire
period, spanning hundreds of years, chocolate was
consumed only as a drink. The world changed in 1847
when an English company introduced “solid
eating chocolate” and the rest was culinary
history.
An interesting parallel exists
with the coffee bean – whose story begins
on the other side of the ocean. According to legend,
the wonders of the coffee bean were first discovered
by an Ethiopian goat herder who observed the excited
demeanor of his goats snacking on the wondrous coffee
cherry – the fruit that holds the bean. The
goatherd brought a handful of the fruit to his local
religious leader, who promptly boiled the cherries
in water and made the first cup of coffee. In the
early 1600s Venetian traders presented coffee to
Europe where it gained such popularity with the
fashionable and influential, that the famous philosopher
Voltaire is rumored to have consumed 50 cups a day
and Johann Sebastian Bach even wrote a famous one-act
operetta entitled “The Coffee Cantata”.
Coffee crossed the Atlantic from Europe to the Americas
in 1723, almost 200 years after chocolate made the
same voyage in the opposite direction with Cortez.
This time a young naval officer named Gabriel Mathieu
de Clieu brought the first coffee plant to the Americas.
Coffee gained its first spot in American history
when it was used as a form of protest by colonists
against the British monarchy in retaliation for
levying a tax on British tea. Just about ever since,
coffee has enjoyed wild popularity as a beverage
– but has never “crossed over”
to be enjoyed as a food like its counterpart chocolate.
Why had coffee not made this
historic jump to be enjoyed not only as a beverage
but also as a food? There’s obviously room
in our culinary hearts for both – just consider
enjoying a fine cup of drinking chocolate and the
next day enjoying your favorite gourmet chocolate
bar. What then was the world missing without a coffee
bar. This question intrigued us – considering
the success of chocolate in a similar endeavor.
No one had done it – so maybe its impossible
we thought. Maybe it would taste terrible…
We decided to find out for ourselves. And after
weeks of smelling the wonderful aroma of coffee
all night as strange concoctions of coffee, milk
and sugar were mixing and milling – we had
our answer. Not only could it be done, but it was
incredibly good – authentic, rich, full- bodied
coffee flavor with the melt in your mouth indulgence
of the finest chocolate. Coffee, like its fellow
traveler chocolate, had finally completed its journey.
We struggled to describe this new creation, which
made all the sense in the world yet made no sense
at all. Over time we have found that to taste is
to believe. So we invite you to relive history in
a whole new way as coffee embarks on the same journey
chocolate did over 150 years ago… from favorite
beverage to beloved food. Enjoy Caffe Acapella.
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