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Characteristics of Yemen Mocha Coffee Beans? Yemen Coffee Yemen Mocha Coffee's Cultivation History

Published: 2026-01-27 Author: FrontStreet Coffee

Last Updated: 2026/01/27, Professional coffee knowledge exchange For more coffee bean information Please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat official account cafe_style ) In 1708, de la Roque and three ships of the French East India Company arrived at the port of Mocha in Yemen, becoming the first Frenchmen to sail around the southern tip of Africa into the Red Sea. They took risks, spent a year traveling such a long distance, all to purchase coffee directly.

For professional coffee knowledge exchange and more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat public account: cafe_style).

In 1708, de la Roque and three ships from the French East India Company arrived at the port of Mocha in Yemen, becoming the first Frenchmen to sail around the southern tip of Africa into the Red Sea. They took risks and spent a year traveling such a great distance, all for the purpose of directly purchasing coffee.

For a long time, people have always associated coffee with Latin America, but for about 300 years (half the time since coffee became a commodity), Arabs monopolized the trade of Arabica coffee. What most frustrated the French was that the intermediaries in the coffee trade were mostly Arabs, Egyptians, and Indians. But this situation couldn't last long, as Europeans would eventually sweep through the coffee trade, making Yemen's history of monopolizing the coffee trade a faint and distorted memory, and de la Roque was one of the important driving forces behind this wave.

Arabica coffee trees are native to Ethiopia, but the coffee beverage was likely developed around 1400 in the city of Mocha, Yemen. By 1500, this beverage was already widespread throughout the Arabian Peninsula.

Ottoman sultan envoys who arrived in France and Austria in 1665-1666 prepared many of these exotic beverages at lavish parties, thereby enhancing coffee's role in Europe for promoting social interaction and demonstrating status. The Turks also unintentionally contributed to the popularization of coffee beverages in Europe. In 1683, the Turks besieged Vienna for a long time without success and finally withdrew, leaving behind some bags of coffee. Later, the owner of Vienna's first coffeehouse came up with the idea of filtering out the sediment from Turkish coffee and adding honey and milk, making coffee more acceptable to Europeans. However, Arabica coffee remained a very rare specialty at this time.

Because coffee was expensive. Yemen's manual production methods, the layers of exploitation by intermediaries, and high transportation costs made coffee virtually no different from a luxury item. Before 1690, the world's only coffee was grown in just three coffee-producing regions in Yemen, located on steep, irrigated mountains and divided into small coffee gardens, with only a few hundred farmers cultivating them.

Farmers brought their own coffee beans from nearby small coffee gardens to sell in the market year-round. De la Roque recorded that the harvest was "irregular in quantity and timing, so Arabs knew nothing of so-called harvest seasons." Coffee farmers brought coffee beans to market six days a week, each day bringing slightly more to sell than the previous day; when prices were low, they would hold back from selling. In the market, Indian and Arab merchants controlled the coffee business. Although Dutch and British East India companies had representatives in Mocha since the early 17th century, they, like de la Roque, purchased through Indian intermediaries who were said to be the most ruthless bargainers. Europeans had a low commercial status because they lacked political influence, and the only European commodity Yemenis wanted were piastres made from Mexican silver, which had to be paid for immediately.

Encouraged by the success of this voyage, de la Roque returned to Mocha two years later. This time he met with the King of Yemen and discovered that the king had planted a large area of coffee trees. This Frenchman criticized the king's actions, explaining that European kings only grew ornamental plants in their royal botanical gardens.

Later, de la Roque greatly regretted this discussion because, after returning to Paris, he discovered that his description of Louis XIV's royal botanical garden was incorrect. The merchant concluded his adventure report by saying: "The most appropriate and fitting conclusion to this report is to mention... the coffee tree finally sent from Holland."

The coffee tree planted in the Sun King Louis XIV's botanical garden was a witness to European colonization of the Americas. Its seeds were brought across the Atlantic, and it became the ancestor of many coffee trees in the Americas. The French had found a way to break the Arab monopoly on the coffee trade. Within 50 years, coffee produced in Martinique (a French colony) in Latin America gradually replaced Mocha coffee in the Cairo market. Yemen could not compete with the large-scale production of the colonies. By 1900, Yemen's coffee bean production accounted for less than 1% of global production. Mocha's glorious 300-year history of dominating the global coffee market now only evokes that past through a special beverage made by mixing chocolate with coffee produced in the Americas.

Yemen Mocha

Although from a botanical perspective, coffee originated in Ethiopia, from a cultural viewpoint, the event that introduced coffee beverages to the European world occurred in Arab Yemen. From that time on, for a period, talking about coffee was equivalent to talking about Yemen, and also equivalent to talking about Mocha.

Mocha was a commercial port, just as Brazilian coffee was exported from the port of Santos, so Santos became synonymous with Brazilian coffee. Similarly, the port of Mocha, which exported coffee, also became the general term for Yemen coffee.