Origin guideMiddle East
Yemen Yemeni speciality coffee
The earliest written records of coffee drinking come from Yemen, and its old port of Mocha gave the world a word we still use. Today its terraced mountain farms produce small amounts of some of the most distinctive coffee you can find.
The field notes
Yemen at a glance
- Harvest
October – March
- Production
Small. The FAO estimated around 20,800 tonnes in 2019; more recent figures vary widely
- Main regions
Sana’a (incl. Haraz) · Hajjah · Al Mahwit · Ibb · Dhamar · Sa’dah
- Common varietals
Udaini · Dawairi · Tufahi · Jaadi (local names) · Yemenia genetic group
Production figure: FAO, Coffee value chain in Yemen assessment report (2019 data). Yemen is not covered by the USDA coffee tables, and other published estimates differ.
When is it harvested, and how is it processed? See our guide to coffee harvesting and processing.
Chapter 01The story
History of coffee in Yemen
Coffee’s wild home is Ethiopia, but Yemen is where it first became a drink we can trace in writing. Historians have found no confirmed evidence of coffee drinking before the 15th century. By the late 1400s, Sufi communities in Yemen were drinking it to stay awake through night-time prayers, and the Sufi scholar Muhammad al-Dhabhani, who died around 1470, is said to have encouraged its use. From Yemen it reached Mecca and Cairo by the early 1500s. The well-known tale of Kaldi, the goatherd whose goats danced after eating coffee cherries, is a legend that doesn’t appear in writing before 1671.
Most of Yemen’s coffee left through the Red Sea port of Mocha (Al-Makha). The coffee didn’t grow there. It came down from the mountains, and some from Ethiopia, to be shipped. English, Dutch and French traders kept warehouses in the port, which was at its height in the early 1700s.
By 1773, “mocha” meant fine coffee in English, after the port. The sense of coffee mixed with chocolate came later, by 1849.
Chapter 02Farming
Terraces, rooftop drying and rare genetics
Yemeni coffee grows on stone terraces built into steep mountainsides, much of it above 1,800 metres. Farms are tiny. An FAO report put the average holding at around 0.3 hectares, or about 394 trees. Some growing areas get less than 400 mm of rain a year, so water is precious.
That scarcity shapes processing. Most Yemeni coffee is natural: whole cherries are dried in the sun on rooftops or raised beds, often for 10 to 15 days, before the dried husk is removed.
Yemen matters to science too. A 2020 study confirmed it as the place from which arabica spread around the world. That same year, the coffee company Qima and geneticist Christophe Montagnon announced a group of arabica found only in Yemen, named Yemenia, after DNA testing 137 samples. A 2022 study found that farmers’ local names, such as Udaini, Dawairi and Tufahi, don’t reliably match a tree’s genetics.
Chapter 03Today
Coffee in Yemen today
Coffee in Yemen is grown by around 120,000 smallholder farmers, according to the FAO, in the western highlands. Governorates such as Sana’a, Hajjah, Al Mahwit, Ibb and Dhamar are well known for it.
Growers face real pressures. Years of conflict have pushed up costs and made it harder to get coffee to ports and buyers. Water is scarce, and many farmers have switched to qat, a leafy stimulant crop that is cheaper to grow and pays faster. Yemen’s agriculture ministry has said qat accounts for up to 40% of the water drawn from the Sana’a Basin each year.
In the cup, Yemeni coffee is unlike anything else. Expect a thick, syrupy body, dried fruit and dark berries, chocolate, and warm spice or wood notes that some tasters describe as almost incense-like.
Taste the neighbours
Like Yemeni coffee? Try its neighbours
Yemen’s coffee trees came across the Red Sea from East Africa, so if you love its fruity, complex cup, try Ethiopia and Kenya. Both are known for bright fruit, florals and plenty of character.
