Episode 47: Coffee and Tea - the global beverages

Coffee was harvested from wild bushes in Ethiopia and transported across the Red Sea to Yemen, starting in the middle of the fifteenth century. Coffee seems to have spread rapidly in the Near East. By the time the Ottoman Turks conquered Egypt from the Mamelukes in 1517, coffee-drinking was already widespread in Cairo.The spread of coffee to the rest of the world took place in the seventeenth century. The origin of tea in the world started in China around 2750 BC. The Dutch were the first to drink tea in Europe, shipping it in 1610, with the introduction to Britain around 1650. It arrived a few years after coffee had reached England. It was through the coffeehouses that the new drink spread to the people.