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coffee for export and challenge Yemen and her famed port
at Mocha. So, for all practical purposes, the old Mocha Java
blend wasn’t a choice so much as, well, the only coffees avail-
able to blend for many years.

First Coffee in Central America Early in the eighteenth
century, coffee plants from Java made their way home to
Amsterdam, this was not the first attempt, but this time they
survived. In 1714 a coffee plant was gifted to the King of
France and that coffee plant is a grandparent to Central
American coffees. In a voyage filled with drama and per-
sonal sacrifice, another lone coffee plant sailed from France
to the island of Martinique in 1723, and then coffee ex-
ploded in the Caribbean, island hoping all over the West
Indies. It then took more than 50 years for coffee to reach
Central America and be grown commercially.

Costa Rica In 1779, roughly 100 years after coffee is first
sold at retail in New York, coffee growing came to Costa
Rica, the first of the Four Horsemen to have a coffee in-
dustry. There is some disagreement about the origin of the
coffee first planted in Costa Rica, with some sources claim-
Four of these countries are also ing the plants came from Cuba, and others claiming the
plants came directly from Ethiopia. After independence
tied together by something of a from Spain, the coffee industry in Costa Rica began to grow
rapidly and so began the boom years, where coffee not
mystery. only produced wealthy citizens, but innovation. Several
machines used in coffee milling were invented or improved
upon in Costa Rica. But so enthralled was the world with
Mocha and Java that almost all Costa Rican coffee was ex-
within the trading side of the coffee industry. And in- ported to South America until 1843, when an enterprising
ternet research reveals no written record. And yet, most sea captain convinced growers to let him sell their coffee in
people who have been trading coffee for more than 20 England. Until the 1930’s London was the principle destina-
years know, these are The Four Horsemen. tion for Costa Rican coffee.

Why Four Horsemen?

One theory holds that high volumes of these coffees
began arriving so suddenly in San Francisco during WWI
that it took the New York coffee trade by surprise at a time
when it was challenging to import coffee on the east coast.
As a result, San Francisco based coffee roasters became
competitive east of the Rockies, so these coffee were about
as welcomed in New York eyes as The Four Horsemen of
The Apocalypse. Another theory holds that because these
coffees were used in price discovery, they could cause
significant swings in the market, which can seem “apoca-
lyptic” for one side of the green trade or the other. By hook
or by crook, by boat or by monk, the coffee shrub was
emancipated from what is now Yemen in the mid-seven-
teenth century, but it did not arrive in the new world for
another 60 years or so, and when it did, it came from Java
by way of Amsterdam and France. Although coffee was
grown in India and Sri Lanka over those six decades, the
Dutch, growing coffee in Java, were the first to grow enough

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