Luwak Coffee

The man who greeted us at the *Civet Coffee Shack near Tanah Lot was short and stout. (No. Not teapot short and stout.)  He was well-tanned and in his mid-fifties. * Kopi Luwak

He ushered us into a little garden planted with different species of coffee, cocoa and spice shrubs. Like the professional that he probably was, he went into the long and short of civet coffee production. And yes, civet coffee (aka kopi luwak) are the seeds of coffee berries which were defecated by the civet cat. (They had a caged up mangy civet in this garden so you could see for yourself what a civet looked like.)

Civet coffee bean.

"I am sorry to tell you that our kopi luwak is very limited. We have very little stock. Our civets are very picky. They only choose the best coffee berries and our people could only pick very few defecated ones when they combed the area."

Clever, I thought to myself. He is applying the supply and demand strategy.

At the end of the "tour", he showed us to an open gazebo. We were offered sixteen teeny weeny plastic cups filled with the following beverages. (Some are not in the list.)

After an elaborate session where he extolled the many wonders of his sixteen cups of beverages, he left us to prepare our free kopi luwak. I think it's over-rated but after the multiple "I-am-so-sorry-but-we-have-very-limited-kopi-luwak-so-we-can-only-sell-you-no-more-than-one-kg, we ended up buying just that plus some ginger tea which were over-rated too.