Except for Georg Franz Kolschitzky, a Polish spy who had watched Turks treat the beans into delicious drinks, none in Vienna knew what to do with them.
Dismissing it as horse feed, Kolschitzky claimed all the beans for himself.
He roasted and ground the beans into powder and sold the brew at Blue Bottle, Vienna's first coffee house, since 1686.
The Viennese eventually invented the art of filter coffee and today 47 percent of Austrian households continue to drink their coffee that way.
On an average, Austrians consume up to three cups of coffee every day which is about 1,000 kg per year, whether it is at home, at work or in one of the city's 2,000 coffee houses.
The coffee house culture in Vienna is the oldest in this part of the world but also somewhat exhausted.
It is not rare to find bored waiters in crumpled dinner jackets staining the day of a guest with their grumpy attitude.
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