Coffee Smuggler

Coffee Smuggler is based on the true story of Gabriel De Clieu a French soldier who stole a coffee plant from King Louis XV in 1723 and smuggled it to the island of Martinique. There was only one coffee plant in France locked in the King's botanical garden. The King and many nobles had refused De Clieu's petitions for a cutting of the plant so De Clieu seduced a noble woman with a strange illness. She had access the royal doctor Chirac who secretly gave a cutting of the King's plant to De Clieu. With the plant in hand De Clieu boarded the ill-fated Le Dromedaire and faced pirate attacks a hurricane and starvation in the doldrums to bring this precious plant back to his home on Martinique. I invite you to set sail on this swashbuckling adventure of the man who brought coffee to the Americas.