Back when coffee wasn’t a thing, the first people ever to drink it were those of Ethiopia. The exact stories and accounts of how they figured out coffee are many, varied, and sometimes bring Yemen into the whole thing.
Well, for the purpose of this article the exact legend doesn’t matter, what’s important is that coffee was brought from Ethiopia into neighboring Yemen, in the end.
Yemen was a very important trading country, with an even more important trading port city – Mocha. It may or may not have to do with the modern coffee drink named Mocha.
Yemen is part of the Arabian Peninsula, and over the centuries has been part of the Ottoman Empire given how vastly it extended back in the day.
It’s actually how Arabica coffee got its name. It was associated with Arab culture, trade, and became a sort of staple that was internationally recognized.
For a very long time it was basically the only coffee we knew of. So it happened that Arabica became popular enough to be cultivated pretty much everywhere, but most importantly in Asia.
For a few centuries this was okay, until the Coffee Leaf Rust came about. It was (still is, there’s no way to get rid of it) a parasite that ‘ate’ the coffee tree, and thus ruined crops across several countries, starting with Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Vietnam.
The big problem was that Arabica crops were and still are highly sensitive to any pests and diseases, which meant that they were decimated when Coffee Leaf Rust came about.
This resulted in two things.
First, Arabica was replaced with Robusta, which is a much hardier coffee plant and is now almost half the the global coffee production. It’s got naturally higher caffeine levels (nearly double) than Arabica, which means is will survive and actually repel most diseases and pests.
Aside from that Robusta coffee can live in poorer conditions than Arabica, meaning it’s easier to grow on lower elevations. Hence the name Robusta, as in robust, hardy.
Second thing that happened, Arabica became kind of precious. Given how much more flavorful it is, and how much milder in taste than Robusta, Arabica became very sought after.
The whole Coffee Leaf Rust incident only made it more important. This effect was compounded in time by general demand and the efforts needed to grow a crop, and now Arabica is regarded as a sort of premium item.