Thursday, January 05, 2006

Kope Luwak


Is an Indonesian term which translation loosely into English means "you people will buy anything". Kope Luwak is actually a type of rare coffee that has been fermented in the digestive track of the Palm Civet. It seems the Palm Civet eats only the most ripe and flavorful beans and poops them out whole and mostly unmolested except for the specific funk of the civet digestive track. Then industrious Indonesians too clever to actually climb trees collect them off the forest floor to sell for $340 a pound primarily to Japanese consumers. Only about 5oo pounds of this coffee is sold a year.
I would try this coffee, after all could it be that much worse than Dunkin Donuts coffee? One thing prevents me from doing so. How do I know this coffee that I just spent $340 a pound for came out of a civet and not some other animal? I can tell Shiraz from Cabernet but could I tell a civet bean from a squirrel bean? Who can say? At $340 a pound the potential for fraud is astronomical. I have a cat at home if I were to force feed her Starbucks coffee at $9 a pound and follow her around with a baggie the "net" profit so speak would be $331 a pound. What are my chances of getting caught? Any victim of such a scam would probably be too embarrassed to press charges.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry but I am missing something here - why is something out of a Palm Civet's ass acceptable while something out of a squirrel's ass is not?! Pardon my ignorance

Anonymous said...

Apparently he commenter above has never had squirrel ass coffee, if he or she had they would no why squirrel ass coffee is undrinkable. It's like Sanka only more palatable.