Coffee Stories

Plus why does the plant produce it....

When we start take things for granted, it’s helpful to remember times of scarcity. Here’s one for coffee.

In 1723, over 200 years after Columbus crossed the Atlantic, French naval officer Gabriel Mathieu De Clieu made his own daring journey, carrying one precious cargo—a small coffee tree. According to legend, De Clieu scaled the walls of a Parisian botanical garden to steal the tree from its greenhouse, while another account claims he charmed an aristocrat to obtain a graft from the royal doctor. Onboard his ship, De Clieu faced stormy weather and had to share his water ration with the tree, even protecting it from theft by fellow passengers. After much hardship, he arrived at Martinique, a French-controlled Caribbean island, and planted the tree. Within decades, Martinique was home to 20 million coffee trees—all supposedly descendants of that single smuggled plant. Atleast that’s his version of the events as documented in the Année littéraire of 1774.

Why did De Clieu go to such lengths? By the 1650s, coffeehouses had begun springing up in Britain, ushering in an era where coffee started replacing alcohol as a staple drink. Coffeehouses became hubs for discussing business, politics, science, and news, fueling a rising demand for coffee. For years, the Arab world controlled coffee production, guarding their supply by selling only sterile, processed beans. Eventually, the Dutch broke this monopoly by establishing plantations in Java, and in 1713, the mayor of Amsterdam gifted a coffee plant to King Louis XIV of France. De Clieu, an avid traveler, recognized the immense economic potential this plant held. He asked the king for a cutting, and when denied, decided to proceed with his pilfering plan.

Why does the plant produce it?

Today, over a billion people worldwide drink coffee daily, drawn to its caffeine. But caffeine wasn’t developed to please humans—it’s a natural insecticide, also found in cocoa, guarana, kola nut, tea, and mate. Producing caffeine is demanding for plants, as it requires nitrogen, a valuable growth resource. Plants try their best to conserve the production by recycling it as much as possible. For example, they first send it to young leaves that are especially vulnerable to attacks from snails and other insects. Once the leaves grow and become tough, the plant withdraws the caffeine and redirects it to the most important place of all, its seeds. Coffee beans are technically seeds, but we call it a bean because of the way it looks. 

The caffeine in the seeds may prevent it from being eaten, but it also interferes with cell division and germination in the plants. To overcome this, the roots and shoots of the germinating seed sprout far away from the caffeinated section of the bean. Once it attains a certain level of growth, the seed releases the caffeine into the soil to prevent any competitor from growing in the vicinity of the plant. Thus every last drop of caffeine in the plant is put to good use. 

We, humans, have used caffeine effectively too as a way to steal energy from the future. Caffeine occupies a receptor meant for a molecule called adenosine. Adenosine is a naturally occurring substance in our body which signals drowsiness and tells us that it is time to sleep. This is why too much indulgence in caffeine can affect the quality of your sleep. But, in moderate consumption, coffee provides a boost for workers worldwide, supporting indoor work, night shifts, and long hours as part of modern life.

Cheers to the joy of a fresh cup of coffee!