MOCHA COFFEE.
Mayville, D. T.
Where does Mocha coffee come from, and what makes it so much higher priced than other coffee?
Edward Palmer.
Answer.—The genuine Mocha coffee is produced in the province of Yemen, South Arabia. It takes its name from Mokha, the chief port of exportation, on the Red Sea. Very little of it, and that of inferior quality, is ever seen west of Constantinople. Mr. W. G. Palgrave, the Arabian traveler, says: “Arabia itself, Syria, and Egypt consume fully two-thirds of the annual crop, and the remainder is almost exclusively absorbed by Turkish and Armenian esophagi. Nor do these last get for their share the best or the purest. Before reaching the harbors of Alexandria, Jaffa, Beyrout, etc., for exportation beyond there, the northern bales have been sifted and resifted, grain by grain, and whatever they may have contained of the hard, rounded, half transparent, greenish-brown berry, the only one really worth roasting and pounding, has been carefully picked out by experienced fingers, and it is the less generous residue of flattened, opaque, and whitish grains which almost alone goes on the shipping. So constant is this selecting process that a gradation regular as the degrees in a map may be observed in the quality of Mokha, that is Yemen, coffee, even within the limits of Arabia itself in proportion as one approaches to or recedes from, Wadi Nejran and the neighborhood of Mecca, the first stages of the radiating mart.” About 10,000 pounds of this coffee are exported annually through the port of Mokha, says another authority; but this seems to be consumed, as Mr. Palgrave says, mainly in Africa and Turkey.
The Mocha sold in the markets of Western Europe and America is from the East Indies. Some of it even never crossed the Atlantic, being produced in the West Indies or Central or South America. The really exquisite flavor of this choice, small berried coffee, together with the almost fanatical prejudice of the Turks for it, because it is raised in Arabia, and the limited production, sufficiently account for the high price it commands.
INDEX OF PERIODICAL LITERATURE.
Chicago, Ill.