Today Sri Lanka (Ceylon) is famous for its tea but did you know that in the first half of the 1800s it was Ceylon coffee that was served across the world? Sir James Emerson Tennent commented on Ceylon coffee in his 1859 book Ceylon an account of the Island physical, historical and topographical

• It was superior to the coffee of Java, and approached near to that of Arabia, whence the first coffee plants came
• As to the coffee although the plant had existed from time immemorial on the island (having probably been introduced from Mocha by the Arabs).
• The quality of the coffee is said to have been excellent.