Our story

The origins

From the forests of Ethiopia to the shores of Algeria

Born in the forests of Ethiopia and awakened in Yemen, coffee travelled across the whole Ottoman Empire to the shores of Algeria.

Summer 1558

Three worlds meet

Legend has it that in the summer of 1558, in Mazagran, in today's province of Mostaganem, a white town leaning over the Mediterranean, three worlds met: the Ottoman janissaries of Hassan Pasha, the men of the Algerian tribes and the Spanish soldiers under the command of the Count of Alcaudete.

By the evening of the battle, the old Count of Alcaudete had fallen. His son, the young Don Martín de Córdoba, was a prisoner along with thousands of his soldiers.

The captives

Scalding coffee in small cups

True to local tradition, which held that prisoners of war should be treated well, the victors offered the Spanish captives a scalding coffee every evening, served in small cups. But at the time coffee was still unknown in Europe: they had never tasted coffee, and its strong bitterness put them off.

The birth

The first iced coffee in history

To soften its bitterness, their jailers stretched it with very fresh water from the wells, a twist of lemon and a drop of rose water. The drink tasted of shade, of the breeze and of the moon. The first iced coffee in history was born.

The return

Don Martín brings the taste back to Spain

A captive himself, Don Martín, the count's son, was only freed in 1561, for a ransom of 23,000 écus paid by his brother Alfonso to the pasha of Algiers. He returned to Spain taking with him, so they say, the taste of this cold coffee.

1840

The fort of Mazagran

Nearly three centuries later, in February 1840, French soldiers besieged for four days in the fort of Mazagran by the troops of Emir Abdelkader, and unable, so they say, to light a fire, discovered in turn the cold coffee of the local people, lifted with a twist of lemon.

Back in France, they made it known across Europe under the name it already bore: the mazagran.

Still today

The mazagran cup

Algeria's elders still drink their coffee with rose water. It used to be served in a tall footed cup, typical of the region, now known as the mazagran cup.

The name of this cold coffee was already its own: that of the town where it was born, Mazagran.

Around the world

From Portugal to Valencia

Since then, the mazagran has travelled the world: with lemon in Portugal, with an ice cube and rum in Vienna, as "café del temps" in Valencia. In 1994, the world's largest coffee chain even launched its own bottled "Mazagran" in the United States.

Café Mazagran brings it back to life on both shores of the Mediterranean: in Algeria, where it was born, and in Spain, which adopted it.