The Blue Bottle coffee house was one of the first coffee houses in Europe. It was founded in 1686 in Vienna, Austria[1] by Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki as the Hof zur Blauen Flasche ("House under the Blue Bottle"). According to tradition, Kolschitzky helped defeat the Turks in the Battle of Vienna in 1683 by crossing enemy lines and persuading Poland's King Sobieski to send an army to free Vienna. When the retreating Turkish army left behind sacks of coffee beans, Kolschitzky claimed them and began serving mortar-ground coffee to the citizens of Vienna. Kulczycki is credited with helping to popularize coffee in Austria, as well as introducing the practice of serving coffee with milk.[2]
More recently, the name has also been used by the Blue Bottle Coffee Company, a coffee roaster and chain of coffee shops based in Oakland, California[3][4]