Fascinating Fact
19933 views June 13, 2022 posted by Maja Wallengren

LIVE FROM MARTINIQUE: SpillingTheBeans Set Out To Find The Great Grandchild of De Clieu’s Coffee Tree

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Back on popular demand, from my trip in years ago before the Covid pandemic interrupted life as we know it, this is where I was able to unravel this AMAZING part of Coffee History, live from MARTINIQUE 🙂 … but even MORE exciting to all you coffee lovers is that my FULL report on this extraordinary piece of coffee wonders will go to print in an exclusive article very very soon, so stay tuned here for more details. And as always, happy coffee drinking!

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JAN 27, 2015–Dear Followers! The Ultimate Coffee Safari just keeps getting better and SpillingTheBeans has now arrived in the SACRED coffee island of MARTINIQUE, getting ready for the unique research expedition to figure out if there actually is still coffee growing in Gabriel De Clieu’s coffee island. Please stay tuned and we will be back with more info on this unique visit soon!

And don’t miss our story on the arrival of coffee to the Americas — it’s simply too good to miss!

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FASCINATING FACT – The Great Grandfather of 90% of the World’s Coffee is From Martinique

It was 1720 and French Naval Captain Gabriel de Clieu arrived into the Caribbean port of Martinique with 1 of the 3 tiny coffee seedlings that had survived the horrendous ordeal of storms, pirate attacks and conditions near those pictured in the Mutiny on the Bounty.

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Gabriel De Clieu had build what is believed to be the world’s first green house to protect the three seedlings from the sea water, and after most of the water rations were thrown over board in a storm and the Frenchman shared his water ration with the coffee seedlings, crew tried to sabotage the coffee seedling by pouring salty sea water into the mini-greenhouse.

But one of the seedlings survived, growing into the first and very healthy coffee tree in the Caribbean, and from that tree coffee famously soon after would start to spread through out the Caribbean, Mexico, South and Central America.

De Clieu’s seedling is believed to be the great grandfather of 90 percent of the world’s coffee today!heart

For more on the FASCINATING history of De Clieu’s coffee tree and how coffee spread through the world, see: https://globalcoffeefund.com/fascinating-fact-sex-drugs-lies-or-contraband-how-did-coffee-really-spread-to-the-world/

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2 Comments

  • the seedlings were taken from the Jardin Royal des Plantes by order of Louis XV. it was however Louis XIV who had received the coffee trees from the Dutch but failed to see any interest in those coffee trees.

    • Yes they were indeed, and it’s one of the mysteries to many in coffee why the Dutch even gave a couple of coffee trees to Louis XIV in the first place, since they had already embarked on coffee growing in their colony in Indonesia. But it’s a great part of coffee history nevertheless 🙂

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