Coffee culture was confined to Arabia until the close of the seventeenth century; it was then introduced into the Dutch East Indies, and for many years the island of Java became the main supply of the world. At the present time, Java is second only to Brazil in coffee production. In the Old World it is now also cultivated along the Guinea coast of Africa, in Madagascar, India, and Ceylon. In the New World the chief areas are Brazil, Venezuela, the Central American States, and the West Indies.
COFFEE PRODUCING REGIONS
The coffee-tree may be cultivated in almost any soil that is fertile; it thrives best, however, in red soil. Old, decomposed red lavas produce the choicest beans. Coffee grows in any moist climate in which the temperature does not range higher than 80° F. nor lower than 55° F. An occasional frost injures but does not necessarily kill the trees, which grow better in the shade than in the sunlight. For convenience in gathering the crop, the trees are pruned until they are not higher than bushes.
The fruit of the coffee-tree is a deep-red berry not quite so large as a cherry. A juicy pulp encloses a double membrane, or endocarp, and within the latter are the seeds which constitute the coffee of commerce. Normally there are two seeds, but in some varieties there is a tendency for one seed to mature, leaving the other undeveloped; this is the "peaberry" coffee of commerce. The so-called Mocha coffee is a peaberry.
In their preparation the berries are picked when ripe and deprived of their pulp. After pulping they are cured in the sun for about a week and then hulled, or divested of the endocarp, a process requiring expensive machinery. The coffee is then cleaned, and sacked.
The value of the product depends on two factors, age and the care with which it is sorted. Formerly, in the Dutch East Indies, coffee-growing, for the greater part, was a government privilege, and the crop was kept for several years in storage before it was permitted to be sold—therefore the term "Old Government" Java. Other coffee was designated as "Private Plantations." The quality of coffee is greatly improved with age. Brazilian and other American coffee-beans are rarely seasoned by storage.
American coffees are almost wholly sorted by machinery. This process, however, merely collects beans of the same size; it still leaves the good and the bad beans together, though it is to be said that among the largest beans there are fewer poor ones. In the coffees handled by the Arab dealers all the sorting is done by hand, the very choice grade selling in the large cities of Europe for the equivalent of nearly three dollars per pound. All machine-sorted coffee is greatly improved by a subsequent hand-sorting to remove the imperfect beans.
The naming of the different kinds of coffee is somewhat arbitrary. Thus, Brazilian coffees are commercially known as Rio because they are shipped from the port of Rio de Janeiro; the same name is applied to the product shipped from Santos. Nearly all Venezuela coffees are called Maracaibo although they differ much in kind and quality; most Central American coffee is sold as Costa Rica; most peaberry varieties are known as Mocha; and most of the East India product is popularly called Java, no matter whence it comes.
