Where Do Arabica Coffee Beans and Cold Brew Originate?
Several coffee names mislead about origin. Spanish Latte is not a Spanish café staple; it is associated with the chain %Arabica and is close to Spain's Café Bombón, made with condensed milk and espresso. The name Arabica comes from Yemen, yet the plant is not native to Arabia, and its true homeland is Ethiopia, where coffee beans originate from.
Cold brew has a similar story. The Japanese ice drip pot, sometimes called Kyoto coffee, is a later refinement, while the extraction method itself traces to the Dutch and the Age of Discovery, which is why it is also known as Dutch Coffee. Each case shows how trade, translation, and branding reshape what we assume about coffee.
The coffee world hides plenty of interesting trivia: Spanish Latte is actually not a native Spanish drink, but originates from a candy coffee called Café Bombón; the inventor of cold brew coffee is not Japanese either, but the Dutch from the Age of Discovery—although the ice drip pot is a Japanese improvement, the roots of cold brew as an extraction method lie in the West; and the name Arabica stems from a beautiful misunderstanding—it originated in Yemen, yet is not native to Arabia, its true homeland being Ethiopia. This article walks you through these coffee trivia one by one, and retains the related recommendations from the Front Street brand for coffee enthusiasts to explore in depth.
Spanish Latte is not a regular option in local Spanish cafés. It is a signature product of the well-known chain brand %Arabica, and quickly won the favor of a large number of consumers after its launch. This drink is made by mixing espresso, milk, and condensed milk, and the name carries "Spanish," naturally leading people to associate it with a local specialty coffee of Spain.
But the fact is, if you walk into a café in Spain, you won't find Spanish Latte on the menu at all. Even if you ask local shop owners, they know nothing about this coffee. There is no Spanish Latte native to Spain. However, there is a local specialty drink called "Café Bombón" (candy coffee) that is very close to Spanish Latte; it is made with only condensed milk and espresso, without added milk. Therefore, some speculate that Spanish Latte was very likely improved based on this "Café Bombón." (For related articles, click the Front Street portal to learn more → "How to Make Spanish Coffee~")
Ice drip coffee is not the originator of cold brew coffee. Ice drip coffee is a method that uses special equipment to let ice water slowly pass through coffee grounds for extraction. Because this equipment was born in Japan, ice drip coffee is also called "Kyoto coffee." And ice drip coffee actually belongs to a type of cold brew coffee (evolved from cold brew coffee), which leads many people to mistakenly believe that cold brew coffee was invented by Japan. But the fact is not so.
In Western countries, cold brew coffee has a different name: "Dutch Coffee." From the literal meaning, it can be seen that this coffee-making method was invented by the Dutch. Although the specific inventor can no longer be verified, according to tracing in the foreign coffee world, the birth of cold brew coffee can be traced back to the Age of Discovery. In the early 18th century, the Dutch drifted at sea on their way to Batavia in Indonesia for trade, and accidentally discovered a method of extracting coffee with ice water. The coffee extracted in this way not only lacked the usual bitterness, but also had a particularly prominent sweetness, completely different from the freshly ground coffee of the time. Thus, this novel production method spread everywhere along the footsteps of the Dutch, including Japan during the Edo period, where this extraction method was deeply loved by the Japanese.
The Japanese fascination with cold brew deepened continuously, and they kept optimizing the production method, ultimately giving rise to the ice drip pot based on ice water extraction, thus opening a brand-new stage. But we must be clear: the ice drip pot was invented by the Japanese, while cold brew coffee as a production method was not their creation. Arabica originally should not have been called Arabica. The small-bean coffee Arabica originated in Yemen, spread throughout Europe through Yemen's Mocha port, and then went global. Influenced by the word "Yemen" on the coffee bean sacks, for a long time, people in Western countries thought the place of origin of coffee beans was Yemen. This led the Swedish botanist Carl von Linnaeus, when writing Species Plantarum, to assign the scientific name to this small-bean coffee according to binomial nomenclature: Coffea arabica L.
Botanical scientific names are usually named according to their nature, characteristics, or producing region. The so-called binomial nomenclature means that the first word represents the genus, the second word represents the species, and finally the name of the namer is appended. So translated, it is: the Arabica species under the Coffea genus, named by Linnaeus. But as we are familiar with today in this information-rich age, although Arabica originated in Arabia, it is not native to Arabia; its true birthplace is Africa opposite the Mocha port—Ethiopia. If Mr. Linnaeus had understood Arabica's true homeland at the time, perhaps he would have properly named it Ethiopia! But as Mr. Han Huaizong said in "The Professional Coffee Cupping," this may not be a bad thing—the naming of Arabica is a beautiful misunderstanding. (For related articles, move to the Front Street portal to learn more → "Why Arabica Should Not Be Called Arabica")
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
