El Residente
10 The Coffee Story by Bob Normand
The Perfect Cup
T
his is the third and last installment of the story of how coffee became the most popular beverage in the world, and the second most valuable traded commodity after oil. As we shall see, the story of coffee has become an integral part of the history of Costa Rica, particularly in the last f ifty years. In this part I’ll address “The Perfect Cup” and how the search for special tastes progressed in the 20th century, in many ways similar to the global experience with wine. Also, how the periodic financial instability in the market led to great efforts to produce new and higher valued products, and created the specialty flavors segment. The coffee industry prospered over the centuries as more people learned about it through the caravans and
trading ships which brought the beans, and then the plants, to northern countries. The Turks, in particular, invented coffee houses and, being the nomads that they were, spread the word about coffee across much of lower Europe.
It was only a matter of time before the word about coffee reached northern Europe. By the 1500s and 1600s all of Europe, by hook or crook, had experienced and fallen in love with the brew. In the 1700s the bean and plant spread to the Americas, particularly to the Caribbean and Latin America, where eventually Brazil would become the number-one producer in the world. In the 1900s the industry had grown substantially but had, at times, suffered several financial collapses because of overproduction. Because of these difficulties some
