Published: Saturday, July 14, 2007
Civet cat gives gourmet coffee its 'earthy' flavor
BANDAR LAMPUNG, Indonesia - To connoisseurs of fine coffee, only one is good to the last dropping.
Human hands don't harvest the beans that make this rare brew. It's plucked by the sharp claws and fangs of wild civets, catlike beasts with bug eyes and weaselly noses that love their coffee fresh.
They move at night, creeping along the limbs of robusta and hybrid arabusta trees, sniffing out sweet red coffee cherries and selecting only the tastiest. After chewing off the fruity exterior, they swallow the hard innards.
In the animals' stomachs, enzymes in the gastric juices massage the beans, smoothing the harsh edges that make coffee bitter and produce caffeine jitters. The greenish-brown beans are separated from the rest of the dung, and once a thin outer layer is removed, they are ready for roasting.
The result is a delicacy with a markup so steep it would make a drug dealer weep.
It's called "kopi luwak," from the Indonesian words for coffee and civet, and by the time it reaches the shelves of high-end foreign food emporiums, devotees fork out as much as $600 for a pound - if they can even find that much. The British royal family is said to enjoy sipping it. A single cup can sell for $30 at a five-star hotel in Hong Kong.
It takes a pound of their droppings to produce less than five ounces of beans. Roasting reduces the quantity by an additional 20 percent. With just 500 to 1,000 pounds of the real thing coming on the global market each year, demand quickly drives up the price.
Studies by Canadian food scientist Massimo Marcone found that "kopi luwak" drinkers need to be careful they're not duped.
"About 42 percent of all the 'kopi luwaks' that are presently on sale are either adulterated or complete fakes, unfortunately," Marcone said.
Real "kopi luwak" has a top note of rich, dark chocolate, with secondary notes that are musty and earthy, the scientist said. An Indonesian coffee lover described the scent as the smell of moist earth after a rainfall, with hints of vanilla, that teases the palate for hours after the cup is empty.
Other coffees, such as Jamaican Blue Mountain, may score better on official cupping tests that judge qualities such as aroma, taste and fragrance, Marcone said. But they don't come with quite the exotic cachet of civet brew.
Human hands don't harvest the beans that make this rare brew. It's plucked by the sharp claws and fangs of wild civets, catlike beasts with bug eyes and weaselly noses that love their coffee fresh.
They move at night, creeping along the limbs of robusta and hybrid arabusta trees, sniffing out sweet red coffee cherries and selecting only the tastiest. After chewing off the fruity exterior, they swallow the hard innards.
In the animals' stomachs, enzymes in the gastric juices massage the beans, smoothing the harsh edges that make coffee bitter and produce caffeine jitters. The greenish-brown beans are separated from the rest of the dung, and once a thin outer layer is removed, they are ready for roasting.
The result is a delicacy with a markup so steep it would make a drug dealer weep.
It's called "kopi luwak," from the Indonesian words for coffee and civet, and by the time it reaches the shelves of high-end foreign food emporiums, devotees fork out as much as $600 for a pound - if they can even find that much. The British royal family is said to enjoy sipping it. A single cup can sell for $30 at a five-star hotel in Hong Kong.
It takes a pound of their droppings to produce less than five ounces of beans. Roasting reduces the quantity by an additional 20 percent. With just 500 to 1,000 pounds of the real thing coming on the global market each year, demand quickly drives up the price.
Studies by Canadian food scientist Massimo Marcone found that "kopi luwak" drinkers need to be careful they're not duped.
"About 42 percent of all the 'kopi luwaks' that are presently on sale are either adulterated or complete fakes, unfortunately," Marcone said.
Real "kopi luwak" has a top note of rich, dark chocolate, with secondary notes that are musty and earthy, the scientist said. An Indonesian coffee lover described the scent as the smell of moist earth after a rainfall, with hints of vanilla, that teases the palate for hours after the cup is empty.
Other coffees, such as Jamaican Blue Mountain, may score better on official cupping tests that judge qualities such as aroma, taste and fragrance, Marcone said. But they don't come with quite the exotic cachet of civet brew.
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