Coffee and its fascinating origins

Coffee has long fascinated me since i was a child. Those cryptic country names on packets of far off places you’ve never even heard of as a child let alone visited! It inspired intrigue and questions of where our products come from, who’s handled and processed them before they reach my kitchen cupboard. And this intrigue has remained with me into adult life. Thankfully now i’m far more aware of these countries and where they are in the world!

After speaking with Bryan at The Coffee Maven (who knows everything about coffee that there is to know!) he inspired us to write this post to share his interactive coffee map he has developed. Which makes tracking the coffee and its origins a fascinating adventure. If you scroll down on the front page of his website you’ll see the interactive coffee map.

To make you a little more intrigued lets see what it taught me!

I had no idea at all of the countries which produce the most coffee in the world and some surprised me! Indonesia and Vietnam surprised me the most! Not names you see on a lot of coffee packets here in the UK unfortunately.

There are a few tabs of the interactive map. The first is illustrative which I find really good to visualise things. But to delve deeper you go look at the second tab which contains the data. So you can see the actual numbers behind the productions. eg Brazil. 43,290,765 60kg Bags of coffee. 43 million! Not only this but the table shows you the flavour notes of the coffee. Lets keep with Brazil. Chocolate, nutty, savory. So now we have a great reference to see which countries we should look out for on bags to find out desired flavours.

If you’re interested in coffee and origins of food then check out this interactive tool. I think this would be great used in schools too to understand origins. If you use this let Bryan know as I am sure he would be delighted!