The Origin Story of Yemen Mocha Coffee Beans | What is the Price of Yemen Mocha Coffee?

Yemen Mocha: The Last Living Monument in the Coffee World

The world's most unique, rich, and fascinatingly complex aromas have all been pinned on this coffee: "red wine fragrance, wild character, dried fruit notes, blueberry, grape, cinnamon, tobacco, sweet spices, woody tones, even chocolate..." Every adjective you can imagine has been used to describe Yemen Mocha.

The Homeland of "Mocha" -- Yemen

To speak of Yemeni coffee, one must speak of "Mocha." Everyone has heard of a "mocha coffee" — but what exactly is Mocha?

The answers vary. Some say Mocha is a specific origin; in many people's minds, it is a sweet, chocolatey coffee drink. In fact, authentic "Mocha coffee" is produced only in the Republic of Yemen, at the southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula, on steep mountain slopes between 3,000 and 8,000 feet — making it the most ancient coffee in the world.

As long as 500 years ago, Yemen was already producing coffee in the old ways. In the early 17th century, the first Yemeni coffee sold to Europe was shipped through the small ancient port of Mocha, astonishing European drinkers — who then named the delicious coffee after its port of departure: "Mocha coffee." That is how the term was born.

Ethiopia, just across the Red Sea, also exported its coffee through Mocha port, which is why Ethiopian sun-dried coffee is often labeled Mocha too (as in Mocha-Harrar). Today the old port of Mocha has long been abandoned to silt (now called Al Makha), with exports moving through the northwestern port of Hodeida. But the name stuck, and Mocha's fame has traveled the world.

Dark-roasted Yemeni coffee often reveals bittersweet, chocolate-like notes — which is why today's chocolate-flavored specialty drinks also borrow the word "Mocha." So when you see "Mocha coffee," it might mean pure Yemeni coffee, neighboring Ethiopian coffee, or simply a chocolate-flavored drink. For discerning connoisseurs, however, only true Yemeni coffee deserves the name.

The spelling varies, too: Moka, Moca, and Mocca are all common. On Yemeni sacks and documents you can find as many as four local spellings — "Mokha," "Makha," "Morkha," and "Mukha" — all meaning the same thing.

Yemen Mocha is the pioneer of the world coffee trade, and its contribution to spreading great coffee across the globe is beyond measure. In the 17th century, Yemen Mocha — known as "Arabian coffee" (the origin of the later species name "Arabica"!) — crossed the oceans to Italy and other Catholic countries of Europe. For more than 150 years thereafter, Yemen remained the only coffee origin selling to Europe.

In those conservative Catholic lands, anything extraordinarily wonderful was often suspected of being evil, and coffee was once burdened with exactly that kind of imagined sin. Only when a coffee-loving Pope declared coffee a Catholic beverage and blessed those who drank it did coffee spread freely across Europe. Ethiopia may have discovered coffee first, but it was Yemen that made coffee flourish.

The Last Living Monument in the Coffee World

Today, Yemeni farmers still grow coffee the way their ancestors did 500 years ago. The cherries develop naturally on the trees, with no fertilizers or pesticides of any kind. In summer, the plants drink in the little rain and mist the mountain slopes provide, flowering and setting fruit. In the dry winter, the ripe cherries are left hanging on the trees to air-dry naturally — a unique and rare practice that only Arabia's extremely dry climate and fierce sun allow; anywhere else, the cherries would rot on the branch.

The ripe or dried cherries fall naturally, are shaken down, or are picked. Nearly a quarter of Yemen's entire population — its coffee farmers — spreads the cherries, pulp and all, across rooftops, in low sheds in front of their homes, or even directly on the mud ground to bake under the intense dry winter sun. Once the skin and pulp have dried, old-fashioned stone mills (two stones stacked one atop the other) grind away the hard dried husks and pulp, and the coffee beans are done.

To this day, a few Yemeni farmers still use animals — camels, donkeys — to power their stone mills. Compared with Central and South American countries processing vast quantities with advanced machinery, or even neighboring Kenya with its far younger coffee history, Yemen Mocha is truly the last living monument of the coffee world. And here is the remarkable part: the Yemeni coffee you drink today is fundamentally no different from the "Arabian coffee" that European nobles and merchants savored centuries ago in Venice's St. Mark's Square — Europe's oldest cafés.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If Yemen Mocha's winey, dried-fruit complexity appeals to you, FrontStreet Coffee's natural-process Ethiopian lots offer a close cousin at an easier price. The Huakui natural from Hambella, Guji, in Sidamo — dried for 21 days on raised beds, with defective cherries hand-removed every three to five days — brings pale fermented wine aromas, florals, citrus, and mango over a thick body of honey sweetness, cocoa, and gentle spice, with a long, persistent finish after its medium-light roast.

For the classic clean-bright side of Ethiopian coffee, the Washed Yirgacheffe pairs white jasmine florals with vivid citrus and lemon acidity and a light, tea-like body — like a refreshing lemon tea in coffee form — making these two beans a perfect tour of the flavors that the original "Mocha" trade first carried to the world.