Cafés in Sri Lanka Colombo

From temple flowers to the British estates

Accounts of coffee's arrival differ. Sinhala sources date it to Arab traders in 1503; others say Muslim pilgrims brought it from Yemen, via India, in the early 17th century.⁵¹ Sinhalese villagers first used the young leaves in curries and the flowers as temple offerings, not the beans. The Dutch made the first attempt at systematic cultivation in 1740.¹

The British, who took control of the island in 1815, made it a plantation crop. George Bird was the first to grow coffee commercially, at Singhapitiya; Governor Edward Barnes, in office from 1824, set up an estate at Gannoruwa in 1825; and large-scale production followed the Colebrooke–Cameron reforms of 1833.¹

The railway to Colombo was built for coffee. Governor Sir Henry Ward called it "an absolute and imperative necessity" if Ceylon was not to "cease to exist as a coffee producing colony", and the first train reached Kandy on April 25, 1867.⁸

Devastating Emily: the leaf rust of 1869

In 1869 small, pale-yellow spots began to appear on coffee leaves in the south-center of the island. It was the first global outbreak of Hemileia vastatrix, the coffee leaf rust fungus, which weakens the bushes rather than killing them: the leaves drop and yields fall.² Planters called it "Devastating Emily".¹

Output began a rapid decline in 1879, the year Kew Gardens sent the 25-year-old mycologist Harry Marshall Ward to the island. In two years he proved the fungus caused the disease and worked out its life cycle, but could offer no cure.² By 1886 exports were down 80%, by 1890 planters had abandoned 90% of the land under coffee, and by 1900 coffee covered only 4,610 ha.²¹

How tea took over the coffee estates

Tea was already in the ground. In 1867 James Taylor planted 19 acres of it on Loolecondera Estate at Galaha, in the hill country; a fully equipped tea factory opened there in 1872, and in 1873 twenty-three pounds of his tea reached London.³

In the 1880s planters from across the hill country visited Loolecondera to learn tea growing, and by the late 1880s almost all coffee plantations had been converted. By 1899 nearly 400,000 acres were under tea.³ The first public tea auction in Colombo was held in 1883.³ Sri Lanka is now the world's fourth-largest tea producer.²

Kōpi in the hill country today

Coffee, කෝපි (kōpi) in Sinhala, is still a hill-country crop.⁵ Arabica grows above about 400 m in Nuwara Eliya, Kandy, Matale and Badulla districts, and robusta below 600 m in Kegalle, Kurunegala, Kandy and Matale.⁴

The revival is slow. The Department of Export Agriculture began supplying saplings, finance and training in the 1970s; by the 1990s most coffee came from home gardens, often a few bushes kept by tea farmers, and was sold cheaply through trading houses in Colombo.⁶ Its arabica variety Lak Parakum has been planted since the early 2000s.⁹ As of 2023, quality coffee fetched about Rs 1,200–1,300 a kilo, against about Rs 400 five years earlier.⁴

Colombo: the tea port drinks coffee

In 2017 Sri Lanka still imported more coffee than it exported. When the pandemic brought a ban on green-coffee imports, cafés turned to local producers,⁶ and the rising cost of imported coffee has since pushed popular Colombo coffee houses toward local blends.⁴ The city's newer cafés pair coffee with food, and all-day brunch draws local families as well as visitors.⁶

Colombo 7, or Cinnamon Gardens, about 3 km south-east of the center, is a district of tree-lined streets and mansions around Viharamahadevi Park, the Town Hall and the National Museum. It takes its name from a cinnamon plantation that covered 289 acres in 1789.⁷