Today Ethiopia is the 5th largest coffee producer and is known around the world as one of the highest-quality producers in the world.
By the 1800’s, commercial coffee production was in full swing, though many farmers were still harvesting coffee cherries from natural coffee forests.
Some monks in Ethiopia were already chewing the coffee berries for energy before 850 AD. We also have reason to Arabic scientific documents from 900 AD mention brewed coffee (“buna”) for the first time, proving that the drink was gaining traction over a thousand years ago.
Kaldi was a young goat herder who lived around 850 AD (or, so the legend goes). Every day he would take his goats to different pastures to graze. One day he noticed some of his goats were acting strange and jumping excitedly. He investigated and discovered that the wild goats were eating small berries off a shrub. Kaldi ate a few berries himself, felt elated and energized, and knew he’d found something special.