World's rarest coffee

From The Folks next door.

The Folks Next Door is a two-volume collection of short stories prefaced with:

Whenever the news unveil a new horror to afford us a glimpse into the darker aspects of the human soul, we often forget the actors in these tragedies are people like you or me; the taciturn bus driver, the affable hotel porter or the prim lady walking her poodle. People who awake under the same sun, dream under the same moon and harbor the wickedest thoughts. The folks next door is a collection of short stories about ordinary people; someone’s neighbors, mine or, perhaps, yours.

The original concept was to tell stories of everyday life. I wrote tales of the lonely, the sick, the poor, the different, the frightened, the confused and the strange.

One of the tales, Rare Foods. Inc, is set in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia (a stone throw from Finland and Russia), where I spent some of the worst days of my life. The research of Rare Foods. Inc, yielded this gem:

Coffee grows in dozens of countries around the world. Some varieties have earned a special reputation, often based on a combination of rarity, unusual circumstances and particularly good flavor. These coffees, from Jamaican Blue Mountain to Kona to Tanzanian Peaberry, command a premium price. But perhaps no coffee in the world is in such short supply, has such unique flavors and an, um, interesting background as Kopi Luwak. And no coffee even comes close in price: Kopi Luwak sells for $75 per quarter pound. Granted, that's substantially less than marijuana, but it's still unimaginably high for coffee.

Kopi (the Indonesian word for coffee) Luwak comes from the islands of Sumatra, Java and Sulawesi (formerly Celebes), which are part of the Indonesian Archipelago.

On these Indonesian islands, there's a small marsupial called the paradoxurus, a tree-dwelling animal that is part of the civet family. The furry animals climb among the coffee trees eating only the ripest, reddest coffee cherries.

The locals gather the beans, which come through the digestion process fairly intact, still wrapped in layers of the cherries' mucilage, (make that shit). The enzymes in the animals' stomachs, though, appear to add something unique to the coffee's flavor through fermentation.

Japan buys the bulk of Kopi Luwak, estimating a total annual crop of less than 500 pounds.

Curiously, Kopi Luwak isn't the only "specialty" food that begins this way. Argan is an acacia-like tree that grows in Morocco and Mexico which, through its olive-like fruit, yields argan oil. InMorocco, the Berbers encourage goats to climb the trees to eat the fruit. They later gather the goats' excrement and remove the pits, which they grind for oil to be used in massage, in cooking and as an aphrodisiac.

If you're in the neighborhood, drop by for a cup of coffee.