Web Site Serves Up Catchy Coffee Facts for Readers

The following coffee facts were taken from Gourmet-Coffee-Zone.com: As recently as 2007, Starbucks has been raising the price of coffee, particularly to cover the costs of dairy products. The average cup of straight coffee at Starbucks costs a little over two dollars a cup, while lattes are priced at a little over four dollars. According to Gourmet Coffee, if you want to order a latte with extra foam or cream, you'll easily pay five dollars or more. The rise in prices has not deterred consumers, however. According to a study by the National Coffee Association, gourmet coffee consumption rose by three per cent in 2007 over the year before, while daily coffee consumption in general fell by two per cent during the same period. The NCA estimated that specialty coffee revenue in 2006 to be a whopping $12.2 billion. Seventy-five per cent of these sales took place in cafes and with coffee beverage retailers.

Johann Sebastian Bach composed a cantata about coffee between 1732 and 1734. At the time, coffee had been a popular drink in Europe for hundreds of years, while coffee houses were a frequent meeting place, including Leipzig, Germany, where Bach lived at the time. According to Gourmet-Coffee-Zone.com, the musical composition in question was more of "satirical comedy" and relates the tale of coffee addiction, considered to be a serious problem in society at the time.

The first wholesale coffee roasting company in America opened its doors in 1790. The same year the first advertisement for coffee in a newspaper was published.

The well-known and popular latte in coffee circles is considered to be an American phenomenon. If you ask for a latte in Italy, you'll get a glass of milk (often warm milk). If you want a latte as it is known in America, you need to ask for a caffe latte (coffee with milk).

The first coffee filtre was created in 1908 by Melitta Benz, a housewife in Dresden, Germany. She used a blotting paper to create the first filtre. The same year, she and her husband, Hugo Bentz, started the Melitta Bentz company, a name synonymous with coffee filtres to this day.

According to legend, a cup of Maxwell House coffee was served to President Theodore Roosevelt in 1907, who declared the coffee to be "good to the last drop." Later, in 1926, the Cheek-Neal Coffee company, which at the time owned the rights to Maxwell House, registered the Presidential remark as a trade mark slogan, a slogan that continues to this very day.

I will be posting more interesting trivia from Gourmet-Coffee-Zone.com in the next blog.