A fasting Yemeni Sufi mystic ate berries in the year 1230 after noting birds bubbling around the sun and back. Eager for their gummy berry juice, his eyes became crystals as enlightened taste buds painted his way.

An exiled Mochan healer roasted berries seven hundred years ago to take away the bitterness and end his stomach’s claims. He found it rock hard like the beans I got last week. Dropped it into water on the fire. The smell spread for the very first time, reaching its true home – nostrils, filled with the sublime. He levitated, just in time to drink a cuppa joe and celebrate his increase in status – Saint Wine of the Bean.

Eleven hundred years ago, Ethiopian goats bounced about after grazing on a berry bush. The goatherd, in touch with his inner goat, followed suit and bounced to boot, all the way to a monastery in the hills. Every ounce of sin was cast into the fire with aromatic consequences. After a mug full of chanting and pious prayer holy men ground the roasted results and,
ah, what have we there?

However the story started doesn’t matter much. You won’t stop me from sipping my new-fangled abominable heathenish liquor as described in an anonymous petition, 1674.

As I smell the steamy energy, I smile at the irony – of the apex of the Enlightenment having waited for this darkest drink of all to, at least partially, replace all-day wine, beer and fire water.

My BITTER BLACK BEVERAGE read the sign of Jacob’s inaugural Oxford shop.

Qahhwat al-bun … Kahve … Koffie … Coffee

Ah …

The enamel pot startles my eyes as I inhale good morning darkness – my old friend.