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Photo: Joseph Vernet / Wikimedia Commons, public domain. Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu was a French naval officer who, in 1723, smuggled a single coffee seedling from the royal botanical gardens in Paris to the Caribbean island of Martinique. The voyage took weeks,...

A coffee tree in flower in the Maricao mountains, Puerto Rico. Photo: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region / Wikimedia Commons, public domain. Summary Coffee arrived in Puerto Rico in 1736, brought by Martinique colonists seeking new plantation oppo...

Photo: Library of Congress, Chronicling America / Wikimedia Commons, public domain, cropped. Between 1800 and 1898, Puerto Rico built one of the most respected coffee industries in the world — and then lost it in a single decade. At its height the island was t...

Photo: Library of Congress / Wikimedia Commons, public domain. On August 8, 1899, Hurricane San Ciriaco crossed Puerto Rico and ended the island's era as a world coffee power. The storm killed more people than any other hurricane in Puerto Rican history, destr...

Coffee pickers near Corozal, Puerto Rico, December 1941. Photo: Jack Delano, U.S. Farm Security Administration. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-fsa-8a37457. No known restrictions. Summary When Spain ceded Puerto Rico to the United States in 1898, coffee was the is...

Summary Since 1950, Puerto Rican coffee has become much smaller in land and in number of farms. It has been struck by hurricanes, among them Georges in 1998, María in 2017 and Fiona in 2022, and by coffee leaf rust, first detected on the island in 1989. Each t...

Photo: Unknown author / Wikimedia Commons, public domain. Yauco is the most internationally recognised of Puerto Rico's coffee municipalities, and the reason is partly geography and partly history. Its mountains sit at the right altitude, its Corsican settlers...

Summary Adjuntas is a mountain municipality in the Cordillera Central of Puerto Rico, inside the island's coffee zone. It was founded on August 11, 1815, and is known as "La Suiza de Puerto Rico", the Switzerland of Puerto Rico, for its cool climate and mounta...

Photo: Norma Arbelo Irizarry / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.5. Summary Lares holds a unique place in Puerto Rican history and coffee culture. This western mountain municipality was the site of the 1868 Grito de Lares, the historic revolutionary uprising for P...

View of roadway from Cerro de Punta, on 6 April 2008. Photo: Steven Isaacson / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0. Summary Jayuya is a mountain municipality in the Cordillera Central, at the centre of Puerto Rico. It is home to Cerro de Punta, the island's highes...

Coffee tree atop the Maricao mountains in Puerto Rico. Photo: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region / Wikimedia Commons, public domain. Summary Maricao is a mountain municipality in western Puerto Rico, founded in 1874. In the nineteenth century it w...

Photo: Wellcome Collection / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0. Summary Coffea arabica is the botanical species responsible for the majority of the world's high-quality coffee, producing beans prized for their complex flavors, pleasant acidity, and aromatic richnes...

Photo: Timothy A. Gonsalves / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Summary Coffea canephora, commonly called robusta, is the second most commercially important coffee species globally and the primary alternative to arabica. The species produces higher yields, resi...

Photo: Marcelo Corrêa / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0. Summary Bourbon is one of the most historically important and commercially significant varieties of Coffea arabica, prized for its balanced sweetness, complex flavors, and strong specialty coffee perform...

Summary Typica is one of the most culturally and genetically important varieties of Arabica coffee. It is a tall plant with bronze-tipped young leaves, low yields, high susceptibility to coffee leaf rust, and good cup quality. Its story runs from Yemen to Indi...

Summary Gesha (also spelled Geisha) is the most prestigious variety of Coffea arabica, prized for its extraordinary floral and tea-like flavor characteristics that command record-breaking prices in specialty coffee auctions. Originally from the Gesha mountain ...

Photo: Raminagrobis / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Summary Espresso is a concentrated coffee beverage produced by forcing hot water through finely-ground coffee under approximately 9 bars of pressure, yielding a small, intensely flavored shot topped with g...

Photo: Kim Sanso / Wikimedia Commons, CC0. Summary Pour over coffee is a manual brewing method where hot water is poured slowly over ground coffee held in a filter, allowing gravity to drip the brewed coffee into a vessel below. This technique produces clean, ...