By the late 1700s, the French colony that would become Haiti grew half of the world's coffee and was the most profitable colony on the planet. All of Haiti's coffee is Arabica, the high-quality bean used in gourmet coffees. Because coffee growing methods in Haiti have hardly changed for three centuries, the country's plants remain effectively unchanged from the earliest trees brought to the Western Hemisphere. As a result, coffee from Haiti is unique from that produced anywhere else in the world.