SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK
Years ago,
when I first got started in the emergency services, an old medic told me, “Son,
if you plan to stay in this business, you’d better learn to love coffee.”
I never did (although I certainly
did grow to love caffeine). The following story may be one of the reasons why.
I first heard it years ago, but it took me this long to get enough guts to write
about it:
Would you
like a nice cup of Kopi Luwak?
What coffee
drinker wouldn’t? It’s a rare gourmet coffee, very expensive, that comes from
the exotic land of Indonesia. You may not have heard of it because it was
mostly popular in Japan, where people just went bananas for it.
Back in the
late 2000’s, it became one of the most expensive and most sought-after coffees
in the world. Just 500 pounds of it is harvested annually, and it has only
limited availability in Japan and the US – the western US, I’m guessing.
It’s, um,
harvested by monkeys.
Specifically,
it’s harvested by the palm civet, a tree dwelling animal that’s described as
more of a cat than a monkey. Its scientific name is paradoxurus hermaphrodites.
I’ll let
you digest that for a moment.
Oh, and
I’ll let the monkey, or whatever it is, digest on that too. Why? Because the
animal, also called a Palm Toddy Cat, doesn’t harvest it in the traditional
way. Oh, no.
It eats the
coffee berries.
Yes, it
eats the coffee berries, only picking the perfect ones. The rest of its diet
consists of alcoholic tree sap, and I suppose a diet of caffeine and booze says
a lot about its behavior. It says nothing, however, about the thinking behind
the people who flock to this coffee, which I will refer to as crappuccino.
Made from
digested coffee beans.
Digested.
“It’s the
best coffee I’ve ever tasted,” says coffee shop owner Richard Karno. “It smells
musty, but it roasts up real nice.”
Other
experts also describe a unique “earthy” taste.
This is the
very definition of “you can’t make this stuff up”.
The animal
... hm. Okay, let me just jump right into it: The monk-cat, or whatever it is,
excretes the beans whole, unscratched, and fortunately for those who harvest it
without dung. The Toddy Cats pick the ripest, reddest coffee beans, eat the
outer covering, and … process the rest.
Experts say
crappuccino was first discovered hundreds of years ago, when explorers sampled
it on Java, Sumatra, and Sulawesi. Those must have been some desperate
explorers:
“Captain,
I’m so thirsty: Suppose we make coffee from those strange monkey droppings?”
“Sure, why
not? I’m getting tired of this lemonade we get from wringing out the ship’s
cat.”
They drank
a lot of rum back then.
Here’s how
food and drink critic Chris Rubin explained it. Read this very carefully:
“Whether
it’s because the intestinal juices give some special flavor or because it eats
only perfectly ripe berries, the Toddy Cat’s droppings produce what many say is
the world’s finest coffee.”
I know I’ve
already explained that, but go back and read the quote again. He’s serious. Not
a hint of irony.
I keep
thinking of when my wife plays World of Warcraft: When she wins special gear
for her character, she says it “drops”. Would WoW have gotten so popular if
players had to scoop their stuff out of their horse droppings?
I don’t
know … is it any more weird than a lot of the other foods we eat? Who first
came up with the idea of drinking milk?
“You got
this from where?”
“Hey, it
works for babies.”
“Yeah, but
this came from a cow!”
Or how
about eggs?
“Look what
just dropped out of that hen.”
“Do you
think we can eat it?”
“Okay, did
you see where it just came from?”
Or caviar. Or
escargot. Rich people love that stuff. It’s fish eggs and snails, people.
The one I’ve never understood is yogurt.
Whoever came up with the idea of trying that must have really, really hated
wasting food. I mean, most foods get thrown out when they look and smell like
yogurt.
But it
least it didn’t come from a palm civit toddy cat’s paradoxurus hermaphroditus digestive
system.
I suppose,
in the end, it’s just a case of rich people being eccentric, just for the fun
of it. So what the heck: If you want to pay big bucks for Kopi Luwak (which
probably translates to “stupid tourist”), go ahead. I assume you’ll be having
it with escargot.
