Coffee has become such a staple in our modern-day lives that it's almost impossible to imagine a time before and without coffee. Coffee beans are the second-most traded raw material worldwide, second only to crude oil in value, generating sales over $55 billion a year. How did these unique beans become such a popular, recognizable part of our lives?

Coffee originated from plants in Ethiopia. These plants are evergreen, meaning that they have green leaves year-round. After three to five years, coffee plants start their flowering process, where small white flowers produce green berries. These berries mature over a year, ripen, and turn red.

Legend has it that, many hundreds of years ago in the Ethiopian highlands, a young goat herder named Kali saw his goats eating some berries they found on a tree, and he noticed that the goats then became so energetic they did not sleep that night. The young man decided to collect some of these berries and share his encounter with the local monastery. The monks became intrigued and experimented with the berries, roasting them and mixing them with water to create a delicious beverage.

By the 15th century, news of the energizing effects of coffee beans had spread from Ethiopia to the Arabian Peninsula. Initially met with controversy and banned on religious grounds, coffee finally got some respect when it was adopted to aid long prayer and study sessions. The popular beverage they called "qahwah" was consumed both at home and in the first coffee houses, public spaces for people to gather, socialize, listen to music, and talk about politics.

With greater travel from Europe to the Middle East in the 17th century, returning Europeans brought coffee back home with them. Once again, coffee was met with fear, and some priests even called it "the bitter invention of Satan." But when Pope Clement VIII tried coffee for himself, he found it so delicious that his approval resulted in its being made available to all Catholics. Soon after, coffee houses were opened in Western Europe and became centers of social activity.

In 1714, the Mayor of Amsterdam gave King Louis XIV of France a young coffee plant; the King added the plant to the Royal Botanical Garden in Paris. Eleven years later, a naval officer named Gabriel de Clieu decided to steal a seedling from the King's coffee plant and took it on a voyage to Martinique in the Caribbean. Gabriel's journey was quite treacherous, and he had to defend himself from attacks by fellow crew members trying to destroy the small plant. The trip was also interrupted by an ambush from pirates, and the crew had to spend a whole day defending themselves. Then a terrible storm nearly sank the ship, and the sailors lost most of their freshwater supplies. Gabriel had to share his water rations with the small seedling for the rest of the journey for them both to survive.

After Gabriel arrived in Martinique, he grew the plant and spread its seed. The coffee harvests that resulted brought such a profit for the French that King Louis forgave Gabriel for his theft and appointed him Governor of the Antilles. Within 50 years, over 18 million plants were on the island, and all the coffee plants across the Caribbean, South America, and Central American (now several hundred million at least) all originated from Gabriel's one stolen seedling.

In 1727 the Brazilian government sent Colonel Francisco de Melo Palheta to French Guiana to acquire some of these moneymaking beans for their economy. The story goes that the French Governor did not want to share the crop, but his wife was rumored to have had an affair with the Colonel and gave him flowers sprinkled with fertile coffee seedlings upon his departure back to Brazil. Brazil's coffee industry took off shortly after that and is now the globe's largest coffee producer, responsible for 30% of the coffee produced worldwide.

Coffee first came to New York, known as New Amsterdam at the time, from Europeans in the 1600s, but the settlers did not take to the drink rapidly. Tea was more predominant until the Boston Tea Party in 1773, where angry protestors boarded ships and destroyed a whole shipment of tea in response to King George III's expensive tea tax. The protest was one of the first events in the American Revolution and the War of Independence and paved the way for coffee to become an American staple.

Coffee continues to inspire and motivate our modern world, and its widespread popularity has made it the world's second favorite drink, second only to water. With such an extensive and rich history, coffee is likely here to stay. And we at SunriseCoffeeLA couldn't be happier or more proud to serve some of the world's best beans to you!