Over the centuries coffee has come under attack from various quarters making unfounded and sometimes completely crazy claims against it. Most attacks have had some underlying motive to damage coffee’s reputation, often (as is so common in life) for monetary gain. In 1777, Frederick the Great tried to restrict the use of coffee in Germany by claiming it was unpatriotic:

“It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee use by my subjects, and the like amount of money that goes out of the country in consequence. My people must drink beer. His Majesty was brought up on beer and so were his ancestors.”

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So who is Francisco de Mello Palheta?

De Mello Palheta is credited by some to have started Brazil on the way to becoming the world’s largest coffee producer. It is believed that de Mello Palheta started the cultivation of coffee in Brazil, when in 1727, he obtain either a number of coffee seeds or seedlings from neighbouring French Guiana.
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So who is Baba Budan?

Baba Budan is the person responsible for the first cultivation of coffee outside of Ethiopia and Yemen. During a pilgrimage to Mecca, sometime in 17th Century (thought to be around 1635), Budan successfully smuggled out of Yemen, seven fertile coffee beans. Budan had cleverly concealed the beans by strapping them to his belly. On returning to India he planted the beans at his home in the hills of Chickmaglur, near Mysore. The descendants of these plants not only populated India, but were also taken overseas to Indonesia; firstly to the island of Java and subsequently Celebres, Sumatra and Timor.
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I thought I would start a new series today on the legendary and often colourful people who have been involved in the history of coffee. Please feel free to suggest anyone who you think should be included in it. But to achieve true legendary status, just like sainthood, they should no longer be with us before they can be considered.

So who is Captain Gabriel de Clieu?

De Clieu is widely credited for helping to starting the coffee industries of Central and South America. Much of the original stock from the coffee plantations in these areas is thought to have descended from a coffee plant which De Clieu had successfully transported across the Atlantic from his native France to Martinique in 1723.
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America is the largest coffee drinking society, yet nobody is quite sure who introduced it there. In the early history of this country, no one laid claim to first importing coffee. The first settlers probably thought this was insignificant to record in their journals compared to: exploring new lands, meeting the natives and of course fighting for survival!

One theory is that Captain John Smith introduced coffee to America. In “All about Coffee”, William Ukers believed that Smith was the first person to arrive in America with knowledge of coffee. Why is this interesting to me? Well, Smith was a Lincolnshire lad; born in Willoughby (near Alford) and educated in Louth. It would be great to think that someone from Lincolnshire had such an influence on the world of coffee (not that I’m putting down Smith’s other achievements).

I watched enough daytime TV as a student to know that a suspect must have both a motive and an opportunity (thank you Messrs Columbo, Quincy & Petrocelli). So did Smith have both the motive and opportunity to bring coffee to America?
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Over the years we’ve been contacted about our name, ‘Galla Coffee’.  It seems we may have inadvertently offended some people, as Galla is actually a derogatory name for the Oromo people, a nomadic East African tribe.  One person even went as far as to say that our name was the equivalent to calling ourselves, ‘Nigger Coffee’.

It’s a fair assumption that a coffee company called Galla would be named after the Oromos.  The Oromos are often credited to be the first coffee lovers (not that they drank coffee, rather they mixed the beans with ghee to form a primitive energy bar), and they were widely referred to as Galla in many texts until more recently.
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