The United States drinks more coffee than almost any nation on Earth. But where did it all begin? The answer is a single Atlantic port, and a date around 1668.
New Amsterdam becomes New York — with coffee
Coffee first appears in the record of the American colonies in New Amsterdam, the Dutch settlement that the English took over in 1664 and renamed New York. Dutch traders — already deep in the global coffee trade — carried the beans across the Atlantic.
The first coffeehouses
Not long after, the colonies' first coffeehouses opened in New York and Boston. Like their London cousins, they became gathering places for merchants, news, and argument — seeds of the café culture that would define American cities.
Then came cultivation
Drinking coffee is one thing; growing it is another. That chapter opened in the 1720s, when French officer Gabriel de Clieu carried a seedling to Martinique in the Caribbean — reportedly sharing his water ration with it on the voyage. From there, coffee spread through Latin America to Brazil, today the world's largest producer.
Follow the route that brought coffee to New York and beyond on our interactive Coffee Trail.