Indonesia's Kopi Luwak costs $30 a cup and $600 a Pound of Coffee. This coffee is not harvested by humans rather by the sharp claws and fangs of wild civets, a catlike beast that love their coffee fresh. The Civets hunts in the night and creeps along the robusta and hybrid arabusta trees, sniffing out red coffee cherries and selecting only the tastiest cherry of them all. After they chew off the exterior, they swallow the hard innards of the coffee cherry.

In the animals' stomachs, enzymes in the gastric juices massage the beans, smoothing off the harsh edges that make coffee bitter and produce caffeine jitters. Humans then separate the greenish-brown beans 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.

This coffee product is called Kopi Luwak, derived from the Indonesian words of Coffee and Civet. By the time it reaches the market, the price reaches $600 a pound. The Royal Family in England is rumored to drink this specialty coffee. In a five star hotel in Hong Kong it costs $30 a cup.

Canadian food scientist Massimo Marcone thought kopi luwak was just an urban legend. Then he did some lab work.

He found that a civet's digestive system does indeed remove some of the caffeine, which explains why a cup of kopi luwak doesn't have the kick that other strong coffees do. The civet's enzymes also reduce proteins that make coffee bitter.

Marcone went to Indonesia's Sumatran rain forest and collected about 10 pounds of civet droppings and uses them as a "gold standard" to rate other Kopi Luwaks in his lab at the University of Guelph in Ontario. He says the customers have to be careful most of the kopi luwaks available in the market are counterfeit.

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.

How the kopi luwak originated? The local lore says that villagers were ruled by the Dutch bosses who didn't give them enough coffee to drink, so they were left off with these droppings and after cleaning made the coffee.

Today, the world's only source for genuine, uncut kopi luwak is Southeast Asian civets, and most still comes from the ones foraging in Indonesia's coffee plantations. That limits production to a craving for coffee cherries, and the digestive abilities, of a shrinking civet population.

A pound of their droppings yields less than 5 ounces of beans. Roasting reduces the quantity by an additional 20%. With just 500 to 1,000 pounds of the real thing coming on the global market each year, demand quickly drives up the price.

With the high demand, many think the Civet population will grow in numbers. But with increased focus of the Indonesian farmers on other products like cocoa and other products, the Civets are left with little coffee cherries to scrounge. Because of this kopi luwak are produced less compared to the previous years. Some farmers are taking an opposite approach they are growing civet cats in farms and producing kopi luwak. These cats are hand fed with ripe coffee cherries. Others want to establish a natural reserve just for civet cats so they can grow in freedom. The resultant coffee will be in hot demand no matter how they are grown in farms or in the wild.

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Ref: Latimes.