The word "coffee" signifies wine or any other stimulating beverage. Other determinant characteristics include sweetness, body and aroma.
The first coffee plants originated in Yemen, where ancient legends recount how its regenerative qualities were discovered first by goats and then by monks, who noticed how agitated the flocks became after these strange green leaves were burned. They soon came to steep the leaves to allow longer periods of prayer.
The beverage spread around the know world and in 1600 was introduced by a Venetian merchant Pietro della Valle, though some maintain historians claim that a coffee roasting facility already existed in Livorno.
From this moment on, the café became more than a shop, serving as a meeting place and social center, each with its own select crowd. There were cafés frequented by politicians, those reserved for Austrians, those for the wider public, those much loved by the elderly seeking companionship and most importantly, the literary cafés such as the Tommaseo, the Garibaldi, and the Carrara.

In these Botteghe del Coffee, men gathered (they were indeed almost exclusively a masculine domain) to debate and discuss interminably, driven on by the forceful effects of caffeine. Coffee production eventually shifted from the orient to Central America, Brazil and the tropical zone of South America from where it traveled clear around the globe.

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