FEATURE 27
Civet coffee: the journey from tree, to cat’s stomach to your cup
The world’s rarest and most expensive coffee is sweet, rich and aromatic, a delicacy prized the world over. It’s a great source of Southeast Asian pride, because its primary producers are Indonesia and the Philippines. And it comes out of cat poo. Well, that’s not strictly true. The Asian palm civet, while often called a civet cat or a toddy cat, isn’t actually a cat but a viverrid, a small, Old World mammal — but what’s important here is that the bit about the coffee coming out of its poo is accurate. And if you’re going to drink something taken from the excrement of an animal, you could do much worse than the civet, which has a fussy connoisseur’s nose for the finest, ripest berries.
president of the Philippine Coffee Board. Civets, which live in the foliage of coffee plantations, eat a steady diet of berries. Enzymes in the civet’s digestive system break down the fruit, leaving only the beans, which are then harvested, cleaned and roasted. It’s a low-production coffee bean, which accounts for its high price. The delicious flavor, on the other hand, accounts for its appeal among coffee enthusiasts all over the world.
You’d think that civet coffee sellers might want to gloss over how this particular coffee is made, but in fact, its provenance is one of its draws. “Its appeal is the story of how it’s harvested — the long journey from tree to civet’s stomach to your cup,” says Chit Juan,
Civet coffee is also commonly called Kopi luwak, as well as kape alamid or motit coffee in the Philippines, where its popularity is growing. “It has a market locally, especially as a gift item,” says Juan.
Buko juice: Good to the last drop In the movie Who Am I?, Jackie Chan is a Special Ops commando who develops amnesia and joins a tribe in the desert. One day he comes to the rescue of a Japanese rally driver who has crashed his car after getting bitten by a snake by putting together a makeshift IV using rubber tubing and hooking it up to a coconut, providing the injured man with much-needed nutrients intravenously and saving his life. Long story short: Jackie Chan is awesome, and coconut water is good for you. It is, in fact, very good for you. It hydrates you, it’s fat-free and low in carbs, it’s high in potassium, and it’s chock-full of antioxidants. There’s also nothing more refreshing on a hot summer’s day than fresh buko juice, drunk straight from the coconut. The next best thing is packaged coconut water – and none other than President Aquino himself has brought back the news that growing US interest
could bring profit to local buko product entrepreneurs and boost the planting of more coconut trees in the country, as the supply has been dwindling. Coconut water is a fast-growing international business. It has been recently reported that beverage giant PepsiCo is looking into distributing “coco water” in the US, with the possibility of the Philippines as its primary source. Cheers!