The story
The original blend can be traced back more than 500 years to two of the first shipping ports from which coffee was exported, the port of al-Makha in Yemen and the port in Java in Indonesia. Trade ships would load up on coffee from both and take them back to Europe. And then the two beans were (accidentally or intentionally, who knows) blended together and became the world’s first coffee blend.But what about coffee capitalism? The name itself from Hills Bros. coffee company was a bit misleading…their “Java & Mocha” coffee wasn’t a mix of coffees from Yemen and Java. Instead “Moka Java” (literally “mocha” or chocolate and “java” or coffee) was merely a coffee blend with rich chocolatey flavor notes. And a misleading name isn't even the real problem with Hills Bros and the rise of coffee capitalism. The story is a much deeper one with ties to James Hill, the ruthless “coffee king” of El Salvador, and the atrocities of his legacy that have changed the face of coffee forever.
