The civet cat belongs to a family of animals called Viverridae and is more popular for the secretion of a musky substance called civetone used as a territory marker and later, the most sought after ingredient in top designer perfumes. In most remote part of Africa, these cats are hunted for food while in the past, they were reared to harvest civetone, a musky secretion through a gland present in all civet species used for making expensive fragrances.
Meanwhile, in the orients, Indonesian farmers were picking out droppings from another civet specie, the Palm Civet Cat. It's claimed that the undigested coffee beans that passes with their droppings have a special flavour. It was enjoyed by the locals and later spread to European nations through trade routes.
Fast forward to the 2000s, smart and crazy entrepreneurs caught up on the bandwagon vending civet coffee or Kopi Luwak coffee as the natives call it for between $100 to $500 per pound, those were some of the most expensive coffee ever produced, word has it that these are the most creamy coffee you would ever taste but at the end of the day it's all creamy super expensive cat poop but what do I know?.
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