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Read this text and the paragraphs opposite. Decide where the paragraphs go in the text, and put the correct number next to each. e.g. (X) . You do not need one of the paragraphs opposite.

Fancy a cuppa Java?

Answer Sheet

While tea, cocoa and fizzy drinks are popular, few other beverages approach the popularity of coffee. It is estimated that the people of the world drink more than a thousand million cups of coffee every day.

(A) The story began about nine hundred years ago, somewhere in Ethiopia, when a shepherd noticed that his goats became much livelier when they went to a particular area to feed.

The berries were very strong and bitter, and after a while the people of the Arabian peninsula discovered that the best way to take them was to first cook them slowly over a fire, and then boil them in water. They called this drink 'qahwa'.

(B) From there it spread slowly westward, with the Italians being the first European people to become enthusiastic coffee drinkers.

(C)   John Lloyd's coffee house in London soon became a regular meeting place of the city's businessmen, and so many deals were done there that the shop slowly changed from a coffee shop to one of the best known insurance firms in the world. As these European businessmen traded and colonised much of the rest of the world, they took their coffee with them. It arrived in the Americas almost as soon as the first English immigrants did, while the Dutch started to grow the crop commercially in the East Indies.

(D)

Brazil also became a major coffee producer, and in fact produced so much coffee that it became necessary to find a way of dealing with the surplus. (E)

However, a true coffee fanatic will avoid instant at almost all costs. For the coffee lover, Italy once again led the world in the early part of last century. Dr Illy developed the first automatic espresso machine for those busy citizens who preferred not to wait while their coffee brewed.

(F)

A form of coffee which has recently become very popular is cappuccino, named after the 'little hood' of milk which of frothy milk which is poured over the espresso. Companies such as the Seattle-based Starbucks coffee house have made this a truly international drink.

1. It was soon found that the technique used by the espresso machine extracted the finest and freshest oils from the coffee, and this soon became the favoured drink of the coffee connoisseur. Achilles Gaggia took the process a step nearer perfection by using high pressure to produce a thick froth on the coffee which is called the 'crema'

2. It is from here that we get the nickname 'Java' for coffee. The island of Martinique started the tradition of coffee growing in the Caribbean, and today Jamaican Blue mountain coffee is reckoned to be the finest in the world.

3. The roasting of the coffee is a specialist job, and all coffee manufacturers have their own technique. It is the roasting and type of bean which gives each type of coffee its own flavour.

4. It was almost another four hundred years before it spread to the Mediterranean world, by which time coffee was being drunk and traded in the city of Constantinople.

5. After looking more closely, he realized that this was because they were eating the red berries on a particular bush. He tried the berries himself, and observed that they made it easier for him to stay awake for evening prayers.

6. The Swiss firm Nestle solved the problem in 1938 when they invented instant coffee - this is now the most popular kind of coffee with millions of cups being drunk every day.

7. The rest of Europe was quick to follow.

 

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