Dan Snow's History Hit - Coffee

Episode Date: July 7, 2022

A cup of coffee was once a luxury. Now it is quick, cheap and widely available — a daily essential for many.How did this happen? Today on Patented, Jonathan Morris walks us through the evolution of coffee: from how people first figured out its psychoactive properties, to the transformations in roasting, processing and preparation that resulted in a coffee shop on every high street.Listen to the History of Coffee podcast here.Find Jonathan's book, Coffee: A Global History here.This episode was produced by Emily WhalleyThe senior producer is Charlotte LongEdited and mixed by Seyi AdaobiIf you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Hi there, History Hit listeners. I'm really happy that Dallas Campbell has joined Team History Hit.

He's one of the best broadcasters out there. He makes science shows. People watch them. They're great. He has a knack of enthusing about things that you never remember to get excited by. And that's what he does on patented history of inventions. He talks about the things that have transformed our world. You know, our story is really one of inventions. It's about these apes with these opposable thumbs working stuff out. So from bronze to iron to putting a drone on Mars,

we're just on one mad helter-skelter journey. Who knows where it's going to end? But if you want to have a few guesses, you might want to see where we've come from. Check out Patented, a history of inventions with Dallas Campbell, wherever you get your pods. There have been some theses written that say, you know, coffee is at the heart of the Enlightenment,

the Industrial Revolution, all of these things, because actually here it is, something sober, something that, you know, gets people more able to sit in a positive cognitive space, if you like. Ahoy there, and welcome to Patented, a podcast all about the history of inventions. I'm your host, Dallas Campbell. Thank you for joining me. Today, we're going to be talking about something that's been called by some a drink for the devil, and by others, the elixir of life itself. I am, of course, talking about the only psychoactive substance you can consume on the job without eyebrows being raised. It's coffee, of course. Historically, a cup of

coffee was a luxury, and now it's widely available. It's cheap-ish, quick to make, part of the essential hipster lifestyle, and a daily essential for many others. But how did this happen? Who made the first cup of coffee and why? Coffee historian Jonathan Morris is joining me today as he walks us through the timeline of coffee, from its invention, which is a story that features dancing goats, what else, through to the instant satisfaction of that 1980s staple Nescafe or Nescafe Gold Blend, if you were wanting to be posh. Jonathan, lovely to have you on the show. I've been really enjoying your podcast.

It's absolutely fantastic and it's quite soporific, but not in a, I'm slightly bored away, but just the music is really nice. It's got kind of really nice, gentle music behind it. Okay. Well, that's my co-host, James. He loves twinkling the ivories. So he's the guy there. It's really nice. And given coffee is the, what is it? The black? The black enemy of sleep. Yes. The black enemy of sleep. You have that nice ju, the black? The black enemy of sleep, yes. The black enemy of sleep. You have that nice juxtaposition between the black enemy of sleep and James, your producer's lovely tinkly music.

Anyway, I recommend your podcast, which is called The History of Coffee, isn't it? It is called A History of Coffee Podcast Series. That's it. Does what it says on the tin. Does what it says on the tin. Congratulations. And also your book, which is also called A History of Coffee, but not a podcast. Yeah, Coffee, A Global History.

Again, the tin. It's absolutely fascinating because, I mean, I suppose this is the thing about this podcast is that quite often the things we talk about, you don't quite realise what a can of worms you're opening. You think, oh, well, there may be an interesting story here, or maybe it's just a description of how things begin or whatever. Very often there are these wonderful stories and ideas that sort of creep up when you're not expecting it. And I wasn't sure about coffee at first. I'm like, well, where was coffee

invented? I kind of assumed maybe somewhere in the Middle East or somewhere in Africa. And then all these wonderful little gems of stories appeared. So I heartily recommend book slash podcast. And I also realized my podcast isn't infinite in length of time and yet there seem to be infinite stories i'm struggling where do we dive in to introduce the history of coffee the beginning well we can do the beginning which is full of all those things yeah let's start at the beginning let's start at the very beginning it's a very good place to start the coffee bean where how why what let's start with what what is a coffee bean. Where, how, why, what? Let's start with what. What is a coffee bean? What is a coffee bean? Okay, so the coffee bean, it's actually the seed, of course. It's the seed

in the centre of the coffee fruit, which is a red fruit. We tend to call it the coffee cherry. Okay, so most of what, if you like, coffee is about is getting that seed out, cleaning it down to the point that it can come over to you, and then roasting it up. So we have lots of technological innovations, processing innovations, etc. interventions, if you like, to get from one to the other. Does anyone use the actual fruit? Does it look like a cherry? Is it the size? I'm not familiar with the actual fruit, I suppose. Yeah, it is about cherry size. It's a small cherry. You could eat that cherry. It is quite sweet. And the fruit itself, really the primary way that the fruit has been used has been dried.

And that actually takes us into your question about where coffee starts, because it's that dried fruit and using the husk of the fruit that creates the first sort of coffee beverages ah interesting so before so the origins of coffee aren't even the coffee bean it's the fruit that's the bean comes from exactly yes there's an important moment really because then the first sort of uses of that coffee fruit and if you like coffee product are really not as beverage we know that coffee was used the kind of the leaves of that coffee fruit and if you like coffee product are really not as beverage we know that coffee was used the kind of the leaves of the coffee were used to make a kind of a tea the leaves of the plant and the fruit was dried and then at times used to create either

a foodstuff which would be kind of you, mashed together with sort of dairy products or whatever to create almost like an energy ball, or to use the dried fruits to create again a kind of a fruit tea, where you basically use all the dried fruit and its content and use that as a decoction, if you like. And what part of the world are we in at the moment? The coffee tree or the particular one that we use grows naturally in the forests of Ethiopia and in that Horn of Africa region. And what starts to happen when we first become aware of the use of coffee product, if you like, as a beverage is when that begins to be shipped as dried fruit originally into Arabia. And the beverage that you can make from that, which is a beverage called quiche, begins to be adopted by initially Sufis and sort of mystic

cults of Islam, as it were, that used it for their religious purposes. It's quite nice that the origins of coffee start there. And you make the point that the origins of coffee start in the place where the origins of humans also is. Exactly right. Yeah. Given that we have shaped this particular berry, but also I presume coffee over the years has quite a huge influence on human culture and human history, I think. It had a massive influence on human culture, yes. So we get this sort of proto-coffee drink, which is called Keisha?

Yeah, Keisha. And when are we drinking this? This is a long, long, long time ago. called Kisha? Yeah, Kisha. And when are we drinking this? This is a long, long, long time ago. So we know that really from about the 1450s, that's being drunk. It may well have been being drunk earlier or variations of that probably almost certainly were being drunk earlier in Ethiopia. But that's when we can really date it to because that's when we know that it started becoming imported. But I mean, it's sailed across the bottom of the Red Sea, the strait there that connects the Horn of Africa over to Arabia. Yeah, there's a quite interesting sort of

geographical link. The fact that it's there, it can sort of tap into the trade routes around that particular area. Exactly right, yes. Presumably, if it'd been in West Africa, then it wouldn't have had the same... It would have been a different thing. I mean, there are many species of coffee in West Africa, I think, which is that, you know, It would have been a different thing. I mean, there are many species of coffee in West Africa, I think, which is that, you know, it's about 120 species of coffee. But this coffee, which again is confusingly, but now we understand why, named Kofia arabica, even though it originates a fruit, you eat the fruit and you chuck away the pips. Yeah. So at what point, was there a point? And I know there's a sort of nice, slightly allegorical tale of how this happened. But at what point did some bright spot go, actually, you know what's nicer than the, I'm going to start eating or doing something with these pips?

Yeah. We don't have an exact story what we know is i want exact stories exact stories that you see as historians we know to be careful about these things otherwise i would be talking to you about dancing goats and spitting your pips in the fire tell us about the dancing goats because that seems a central thing so the allegorical main story is of a guy who has been given or had the name of Calde, who's a goat herder, who sees his coats eating these red cherries and getting excited and dancing. So, he decides to try them himself and he does exactly the same thing. And he takes them to a kind of religious scholar, if you like, a monk and says, you know, you should try these. And the guy tries them and spits them out, but they go into the fire and in the fire, they make a beautiful

smell. And they, of course, because you would, after all, just think at that moment, oh, let's pick those out of the fire, grind them up and make hot beverage with them. So, this is the story. That story we know from about the 1670s when it's written down basically by a guy from Lebanon who goes to Rome and writes about his native culture. And that's the origin story that he gives for coffee. But it is very much an origin story. Yeah. Well, it's funny. There's so many stories like that in history, particularly in inventions, and some are true and some are not true. I mean, I suppose things like leaving a Petri dish at the window and suddenly you've discovered penicillin is kind of true. And again, it's one of these sort of eureka moments. But we think this is definitely, there was no goat herd.

I think we can say this is definitely false. But what we can say is very interesting about the elements in that other what's happened is they've managed to combine elements that probably came over many centuries, but put them all together in one story. So, the involvement of that religious scholar is obviously very significant because that's the connection with Islam and the adoption of coffee as a legitimate beverage in Islam. And then the roasting side of it is obviously, I mean, that isn't how that developed. But the sense that we have is, as I said, the first use of this is this Keisha beverage with the dried fruit. But of course, by the time coffee begins to spread even up Arabia, by the time it reaches into Turkey, it's very much more using the bean. And of course, the bean would be a much more concentrated and

easier to ship than it would be to ship dried fruit. So there's a logic to that. And there's also a question that you could say that as it moves, we also notice that, you know, the roasting becomes a bigger part of the process. So if you think about Arabic methods of preparation, they were not really roasting the beans, they were what you might call toasting them, they would put them in an open fire, you would sort of slightly grill them in the way that, you know, how we sometimes toast pine kernels or whatever, just do that lightly in a pan light color just to increase the height but by the time we get into coffee becoming available in turkish coffee houses and so forth then we're looking at serious roasting over a fire blackening it and that's your black enemy of sleep i know that enemy i know that enemy very well i used to hate coffee actually when i was a teenager i used to not like coffee at all this is in the 80s before we had, you know, it was instant coffee. And I want to talk to you about instant coffee. I remember I had to write an essay and I hadn't written it. And I decided to pull an all-nighter to write this essay. And then my friend Will, he said, well, why don't you drink all this coffee and that'll help you stay awake? And I hated it. I drank it. It was

disgusting. But I drank it and drank it and drank it and stayed awake and stayed awake and failed to write the essay. But by the end of it of it had a massive coffee addiction and haven't looked back since but you know the other interesting thing that dalitism and you say you know you hated coffee and then you started as a teenager there's a good point to make which is that you know in a way nobody likes coffee the first time they taste it because it's bitter yeah and particularly the kind of coffee that you and i were tasting i'm therefore generously including you in my age group we both suffered i mean you know if you didn't stick or frankly a large amount of sugar milk or both in it it was pretty undrinkable that's not what

coffee should be tasting like i'm still amazed when i go around places particularly in the uk and they still have instant coffee i'm like come on i mean just making normal coffee is pretty instant it doesn't take a long time to get a cafetiere or something and make coffee yeah it's a sort of throwback to the 80s as a massive generalization i would say one of the more interesting things about coffee is that most of the really quite high level applied sort of food processing science that's gone into coffee has been to create products that are substantively worse than the actual beverage that's really and well actually i want to talk about some coffee tech yeah in a bit sort of instant coffee and nespresso and all

this kind of stuff in a little bit take us from so we've left the horn of africa the cradle of civilization cradle of coffee we've gone up into places like turkey and the middle east i mean coffee houses i know were sort of big in european times and they became places of great interest and salons and all this kind of stuff and well you know i suppose because as we say it has a psychoactive element coffee people became addicted to coffee like i am a massive coffee addict doesn't seem to do us too much harm but so when did the europeans embrace this new drink yeah okay so really coffee hits europe in the late 16th and above all the 17th century. We think that there was almost certainly there was coffee in Europe in the late 16th century,

probably in Venice with the kind of traders that would have been coming from the Ottoman Empire, who were mostly the people that introduced coffee into Europe. And then coffee houses begin opening. And actually, as I sort of do argue in the book, when you look at this seriously, funnily enough, actually the first European coffee houses that sell coffee as a beverage are in London and in Britain. And really, that's as much about the ability of guilds and the fact that coffee was seen as a medicine in Europe at that time. But the point that you're making about psychoactivity is really important, because this is a beverage that gives you a buzz, but that keeps you very, very sober. And that's in contrast to everything that's drunk previously, whereby most people are drinking some form of very diluted, fermented alcohol. You made the point that in the alcohol, you know, people for breakfast would drink beer and wine. Absolutely. And which in my past I have done, I admit.

Yeah, probably not in the way they did. But I mean, that's where lots of our experiences like, you know, small beer, weak beer come from, because that's what you actually would have. One of the best history lectures I ever went to when I was an undergrad, one of the starting ones was, you know, it started with, well, you need to understand a bit of these times. So, for example, nuns drank eight pints a day. And when you think about that, you know, no matter how weak that beer was. That's going to the loo a lot as a man of a certain age i understand what it's like to go to the loo a lot and i can imagine those nuns would be up and down

yeah i had not even contemplated that but you've added a whole new dimension to my historical picture and understanding with that but i mean so the point being therefore that you know this is actually uh coffee as something that not only keeps you sober, but actually in many ways speeds up your metabolism, speeds up your brain function. And there have been some theses written that say, you know, coffee is at the heart of the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, all of these things,

because actually here it is, something sober, something that, you know, gets people more able to sit in a positive cognitive space, if you like. But also, presumably, am that, you know, gets people more able to sit in a positive cognitive space, if you like. But also, presumably, am I right in thinking, well, the coffee house, just the fact that it's a social gathering, a place where people will come together and share ideas in a kind of a proto-Facebook, proto-social area. Is that fair? Suddenly, well, presumably pubs as well, drinking places, but they would have presumably been a bit more bawdy. Well, I mean, and there's your inherent difference, yeah? Because, you know, pubs are drinking places, but they tend not to be good places, therefore, to try and do business, for example.

Whereas coffeehouses became the absolute place to do business and, as you say, information exchange. So, I mean, you know, the notion of the stock exchange originally happening in a coffee house called Jonathan's, I'm pleased to say, or, you know, the Lloyd's Shipping Brokers was originally a coffee house called Lloyd's, the Royal Society was originally based in a coffee house. These places became known and their clientele would meet there to do this kind of business. got that yeah the royal society which is the oldest scientific institution i think or maybe the royal institution anyway that began in a coffee house where these gentlemen of science of course science was very different then but would have come together and shared ideas that's a nice idea so we really can thank coffee as a substance for pretty much life modern life not just breakfast but everything i wonder what the world would have been like if we hadn't had coffee. And can I just ask you about the sort of technology you talk about? We move from sort of frying the beans, as a word, toasting to roasting. Why did that happen? And

if I go back in time to London to the 17th century, would a cup of coffee have tasted the same or would it have been vastly different? I think it would have tasted brutal. So, it would have tasted interesting in the first place, because at that time, all the beans would have come basically from Mokka, so from either from Ethiopia or Yemen. So, you've got only one source of bean, but they're obviously going to be quite stale. The adulteration was fairly common, so you might well find other things in there like sawdust, other bits of vegetation or so forth. But really, the whole concept was that you really roasted this dark. Dark was what made it different. Dark was what it was about. And there is an element in coffee and coffee roasting that is the difference between do I taste the bean or do I taste the roast on the bean? And I mean, this is a bit like cooking, you know, it's like if I cook you a meat

joint and I do it very well, then actually what I've got is all that sort of crunchy caramel stuff on top, which tastes great. But of course, your meat yourself, you don't really taste the meat, you're tasting the crust on top of it. I mean, that's an interesting point, this difference in flavour. Did it become a kind of hipster thing like it is now? You know, when you walk into a coffee shop now and you're just bombarded with hipster words. And I wonder what it was like in the 1700s. Was it as equally as fashionable and hipstery? I think it was equally as fashionable, without doubt.

You know, that was the place to go, that was the place to be, and the place to be seen. And I wouldn't necessarily say it was hipstery, but there were plenty of people who went there more because it was the coffee house than because of the coffee. I mean, Samuel Pepys is quite an interesting guy in this respect. Pepys used to go to coffee houses basically so he could promote his career and get deals. He hated coffee, made him sick, but he would go and do it because this was the important thing to do. And we'll be back after this short break. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War.

You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. The other thing I wanted to, just while we're in this particular period, and we're seeing coffee sort of moving around, when did it become sort of cheap and ubiquitous?

Is it still at this point a kind of delicacy, as it were? So we moved from Africa within sort of religious circles and then into the coffee houses of London. Is it still a cheap product? And when did it become a cheap, ubiquitous product? Right, so no, it's not a cheap product at all. It's an expensive product and very much one that is in a kind of a way almost a status product. It starts by becoming cheaper in

the 18th century and that is as a result really of the massive expansion of coffee growing and the use of sort of plantation slavery by the european nations to do that so that increases the ability to produce coffee to produce it at a lower cost and in some cases to incorporate that into for words of a word less well-off diet so they're probably the first people who are drinking coffee who are non-elite are probably weavers in sort of flanders that area where again you're using that psychoactive element of it because you're basically if you drink coffee particularly if you put milk into it or whatever you can kind of create a hot drink that you can have that will also both energise you and feed you whilst you don't stop working at your loom. And of course, if you're on piecework rates,

you don't want to stop working. So that's the sort of the start of that. And then by the 19th century, of course, this is getting more common, and we're beginning to see more industrial-style applications. So the big takeoff in mass coffee is in the US in the second half of the 19th century, and that's sort of technology markets and growing related. So all things come together really at that point. That's interesting. And actually, well, you know, coffee in America, when we think about American history, we like to think of Boston tea parties parties and tea leaves and at some point must have taken americans drank tea i think i'm right in thinking and then boston tea party i forget the date correct shockingly it's the most famous date in american history i think they'd say it's close to

the most famous date in american history which is me cheating because I'm thinking 1776 is the most famous date. But in the Boston Tea Party, it's just before that. But no, so the Boston Tea Party is the origin story of Americans liking coffee. And again, it's a bit of an origin story that if you push it, it doesn't quite hold. It's the origin story of them not liking British tea or coffee, you see, and both of those things. But really, the first big spike, I think, in coffee drinking in America, which then generates that mass market is the US Civil War. Because the troops in the US Civil War are given a massive amount of coffee, or rather, one side is the Union side. The Confederate side can't get coffee, they're desperately trying to make stuff with acorns. But the Confederates drink a huge amount they get a ration of coffee and it would have given you 10

to 12 cups a day great that's my style right exactly i mean i mean there's a great stat which says that if you go through the diaries of soldiers in the american civil war on the union side they use the word coffee more often than they use the word rifle gun or bullet okay and they just drink coffee all the time absolutely all the time and their generals are very aware of the value of that and keep pushing out as much coffee as they can and of course that creates a massive demand post civil war because you've got now a group of people who are very very heavily into coffee you know and so that then coincides with the abilities to start producing coffee product that can be preserved both in terms of the product itself and also the packaging around it

so important technical innovations and it means that you can start coffee roasting as a business as opposed to what it was till then something that you probably got your grocer to do or you did in the street because you just bought the beans yourself who's the big name in coffee roasting then okay so the first two big names the name in terms of producing coffee roasters is a guy called jacob burns jabez burns rather who's a kind of inventor of coffee roasting machines but the real guys who start this off are called Arbuckles. John Arbuckle in Philadelphia uses these machines, creates an industrial scale plant, you know, using big roasters, and is putting out product which he has actually glazed with egg, which he says preserves this more. And this is sort of shipped

off in packages. And it goes, particularly, for example, to people heading out to the West, they'll take it on their wagons, or they'll, you know, have cowboys brew it up in their kettles or whatever. And so this becomes a brand, a coffee brand. It's a branded coffee, very different from, again, what would have happened before. The brand, of course, that I grew up with, because I'm very young, I'm not very young. Why did coffee become so terrible when I was growing up? So I grew up in the 70s and 80s. Nescafe, when did freeze dried, why the hell did freeze dried instant coffee? Who invented it? And why did they invent it given it tastes terrible?

Okay, so there is quite a few stories coming together on that. Why? Well, it starts off, Nescafe started getting interested in, or Nestle started being used, interested in that, because Brazil in the 30s had just a massive oversupply of coffee. And they're desperately trying to get rid of it and find any other way that it could be processed to, you know, generate it because you've got this coffee that's bluntly going stale because nobody wants to buy it. And one of the people they asked to look at that was Nestle. And after a number of years, they came up with Nescafe. But by the time they came up with it, the Brazilians were not in quite the same position. But most of all, because this was 1938, we're about to get a major war. So going back to that whole connection between coffee and conflict, again, the US troops were supplied with Nescafe or the first kind of,

you know, instant style coffee that Nescafe produced in this freeze-dried method. And not only, of course, did they use it and that generate the demand for the product, they took it back into Europe with them. And so, you know, those stories of, let's say, wives in sort of betraying their husbands for good coffee during the Second World War basically relate to this because they have, you know, hey, babe, I've got coffee. I can see how that would work. I've been in situations where people have presented me with instant coffee

and I've lost it. I've gone over the edge. Well, you know, you could have been in the gold blend couple, careful. But it's funny that instant coffee was just a cheap alternative. Well, certainly I remember the 1980s in Britain, it became more and more aspirational in terms of the way it was marketed. It was, I want to say, the ambassador's reception. That's something else.

But you know what I mean? They had these sort of gold blends and all this kind of stuff. Yeah. Why not just have coffee if you're being aspirational? suddenly became just a thing a thing in its own right yeah i think there's a flip side there which is also important which is you're asking about why it becomes more popular and cheaper again and again that is partly because from the 50s on and particularly in instant coffee we see a lot more entry of another coffee species called Robusta, which is easier to grow in some respects. It's certainly more hardy as a crop. And that is cheaper, and a lot of that is

placed in instant coffee. So you blend it into your instant, and having blended it with your Arabica, that also, of course, creates the ability to create your aspirational instant coffee, which doesn't contain Robusta, but could be said to be, you know, gold blend. And presumably after the Second World War, did we stop drinking proper coffee because it just wasn't available after the war? Rationing, etc? It's partly that. Coffee is rationed and it stays on the ration until 1952. It's partly because actually by then Britain had become quite a tea drinking nation. And it's this suspicion of what coffee might be difficult to make. And so, you know, if you make

it really easy to make, then it's easier for us to skip all that need to be knowledge, but the convenience. And then the other least semi true element to that is is this coincides with the rise of TV, particularly commercial TV. And so, you know, if you could make your hot beverage during an ad break, but then this is sort of perfect, isn't it? You know, I've got a two minute break, I go and make my coffee and I'm back watching the TV. That's it. I mean, I grew up, you know, drinking Nescafe and, you know, after my essay thing. Actually, you know, the real abomination at that time was, I think it was Mellow Birds. It was like a coffee powder. It was like shockingly bad, really, really bad. And then suddenly, I guess, round about the early 90s, certainly when I moved

to London, there was no Starbucks. There was no hipstification of coffee like there is now. The coffee shops just didn't exist. And then somewhere, I guess, in the mid 90s, we all started shunning instant coffee. And instant coffee became very much a kind of working class thing. And then hipster middle class people started drinking real coffee again. Well, I think what really happens there, I also lived that period through London. And in fact, that was what started making me think about the history of coffee. Because I started as an Italian historian, yeah, a historian of Italy. And in the early 90s, when I first started teaching,

was about the time that Costa was beginning to expand before it had even become a big brand, but it had just started opening places. It opened one on Euston Station that I recall really well. Old Compton Street. Yeah, that would be right. Yeah. And so these places were just mind blowing. Because for me, the mind blowing thing was, wow, I've been in Italy, I've worked in Italy. And you know, the coffee is wonderful there. And now somebody finally is bringing in this kind of coffee. And then from the mid 90s, that goes wild. You have Costa, you have Caffe Nero. Costa was bought by Whitbread in the mid 90ss and really what they were doing was trying

to create something because they could see what was happening in america with starbucks and they wanted to get in ahead of the market and that's really when things flip out and that you know flips with a lot of things there's a whole british kind of takeoff isn't there in the late 80s to mid 90s where suddenly food becomes fashionable a lot of things are flipped on their head yeah i mean it also does seem to be a very sort of class divide thing as well it's like what kind of coffee do you drink it's still very much a kind of yeah no absolutely it's still something that says something about your status in effect and what i would say is coffee ceases to be kind of like an everyday drink and it becomes a lifestyle drink exactly Exactly. Yeah. No, again, like you say, food as well, you know, it's become this great divide.

You know, it's funny, actually, where I live, I live near Chapel Market. And it's really funny, that market on a Sunday, because on Sunday, half the market is like farmer's markets, and it's all like organic. And then the other half of the market is just normal market. And it's really weird. There's literally a line in the road where you see this kind of culture class clash. I don't like this sort of division. Coffee is a big sort of player in that. Yeah. Well, coffee is a great marker. And I mean, if you were to read the papers from that time, for example, I mean, they're all just full of articles about, you know, what just, wow, latte, how amazing, you know. Okay. Talk about coffee and conflict this is why i get really

anxious in coffee shops and really quite cross i hate the language of coffee yeah because it's designed to be a kind of exclusive language like you say to give you that feeling of exclusivity or they speak the language so when i go into a starbucks or something and i just want a black coffee and they look at me like i'm an idiot yeah because there's you know and also the other thing that drives me crazy is they said do you want a medium or a large i'm like well you can't have medium if there's any two things and i go oh this is probably me being a curmudgeon and a grumpy old man no i don't think you're being a curmudgeon i agree with you and personally i always just say a small and this throws them totally but i mean there's a

reason about this too which is really that there's a fundamental difference in the way perhaps that we or that our market values things and it puts quite a lot of value on volume this is history's heroes people with purpose brave ideas and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. So if you compare that with the Italian espresso, you know, the original reaction is,

what's the point of the espresso because it's so small and you drink it so quickly? But of course, in Italy, the point of the espresso is exactly that. It's that it's really flavourful and does the business quick for you. So it's, you know, it's our different perceptions of that. That's really interesting.

I just want to talk to you a little bit about some technology, because now, you know, for me, the things like all you need is a bit of filter paper and a funnel and you'll get a really good cup of coffee. That's as far, or, you know, a French press. But now it's becoming really techno as well.

You know, things like Nespresso machines with these little pods that you put in i just can't bear all anyway why do we have these why did we need them why did we create this need for this techno coffee okay so i think what we need to do sorry right let me unpack that as we say in our business so i think we go back to that value proposition first of all if you go into the coffee shop the value proposition is seeing somebody make coffee in a way that you can't or don't have time for possibly hence arty things on froth hence arty things on froth it looks very nice and you've got a big whacking coffee machine that you can't afford to have in your house if you're ordinary like us right whereas if i go into a shop and ask for a tea and they give me a tea bag and charge me two pound 80 for it i'm thinking i could have done this better at home i can't really think that about the thing with the beautiful bit of artwork on it do you see what i mean so there's a value proposition there. Once we then get to the

point that people really want to be able to do that in the home, then you have the reason why we have Nespresso type capsules, because that's still a really difficult thing to do. I mean, yes, you could invest a lot in your own coffee machine. Don't, by the way, because unless you're also going to invest an awful lot in your grinder and in your milk frother and in all the rest of it, you're never going to produce coffee like you can do in the coffee bar. But the Nespresso machine gives you a way of doing that, which is, if you like, the instant coffee equivalent of specialty coffee. It's marketing.

Basically, I just getting really cross about capitalism, I think, sometimes. I'm more accepting because I'm more accepting in the sense that I think Nespresso delivers a product, but that product is not the same as a fresh espresso. How do you make coffee in your house? I make coffee every rich way, but I start with a French press every morning because that is actually, to my mind, that's a great way of tasting good coffee. You know, you'll understand what's in your coffee when you do that. And that's dead easy. Hey, listen, we're sort of running out of time, which is annoying. That is a real shame. We could do another three hours here. Well, luckily, you've done a whole podcast that sort

of continues. Actually, this has been quite nice. It's a bit like the espresso version of your podcast. If your podcast is the French press version, version very good and you can wallow in that and this has been the short it's really really interesting story and actually again like all good invention stories it taps into culture and politics and history in lots of really lots of interesting ways and so i want to say a huge thank you for coming on the show and just giving us that little taster of what the history of coffee has to offer jonathan thank you yeah you're the show and just giving us that little taster of what the history of coffee has to offer. Jonathan, thank you. Yeah, you're very welcome. And like you say, if anyone wants to explore more, there's a whole podcast series out there. There we go.

Right, that's it for this episode. Time to put the kettle on. Hope you enjoyed it. Don't forget to hit subscribe if you've been enjoying the podcast. Don't forget to listen to our other episodes. Hey, next episode is a Jubilee special. So we were thinking about what we could talk about for the Platinum Jubilee celebrations. And it occurred to me we hadn't done that many culinary inventions. So I thought what we'd do is we'd do a special on one of my favourite dishes, which was invented for the Queen's coronation. It is, of course, coronation chicken. So we're going to be talking about the ins and outs of that great

staple, that great 1970s, I guess. It was a very 1970s, 1980s popular dish, coronation chicken. It's delicious. So make sure you join me for that. Join me for that. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, Don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you.

Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.