Famous Coffee Lovers

Coffee has a long and storied history, and it its time it has played a role in the lives of many famous personages. Want to learn about a few? Well, humor me then.

Pope Clement VIII was among the 1st famous “westerners” to develop a taste for coffee, leading him to lift the coffee ban that had prevented Christians around the world from drinking coffee.

Germany’s King Frederick the Great loved coffee too, but believed that coffee-drinking soldiers were unreliable. He ordered the government hired a special force known as Kaffee Schnufflers to sniff out illicit coffee roasters and smugglers.

Another famous German-speaker, the composer Beethoven, was so particular about his coffee that he always counted 60 beans each cup when he brewed his coffee.

The French were no slouches either. King Louis XV is said to have spent a small fortune every year to provide for his daughters’ coffee jones. Famous 19th-century French writer Honoré de Balzac supposedly drank up to 40 cups of coffee per day, nearly as much as Voltaire, who’s credited with 50 cups a day.