YEMENI COFFEE

YEMEN IS CONSIDERED BY SOME TO BE THE BIRTHPLACE OF BOTH ARAB CIVILISATION AND COFFEE, AND IS, REFERRED TO AS THE ‘LAND OF ORIGINS’.

Coffee was, first cultivated during the 15th century. Since then, the methods of coffee farming have pretty much remained the same. Grown high in the mountains of Yemen, terrace farms emerge out of the mountains in a beautiful cascade of geometric patterns.

Farming at such high altitudes contributes to the distinct flavours of Yemeni coffees; the higher the coffee is grown, the higher the quality. Combined with the country’s climatic conditions, the extremely dry conditions bring out the beans’ sweet tastes and allow the floral notes to develop; this is why Yemeni coffees have tastes unlike any other coffees farmed in the rest of the world.

As a result, Yemeni coffees have sweet, rich, fulsome flavours, and they also have a long sought after, inherent chocolate fruit flavour.

When coffee, was first being exported from Yemen’s principal port city, al-Mokha, to the rest of the world, people tried to replicate its flavours, so they would mix coffee with chocolate to make it taste like the coffee that came from al-Mokha; this is where the name Mocha comes from.

However, today, most of the world hasn’t experienced the origins of coffee Mocha and discovered its rich, fruity chocolate flavours because Yemen only produces around 0.1% of the world’s coffee. The reasons for this are complex. Its particularly astonishing when you consider that in the early 1700s, the world’s coffee supply originated from Yemen.