Animal dung coffee - only $1000 per kilo
IT may be a sign that the world has gone mad.
Possibly one of the most expensive coffees in the world - at well over $A1,000 a kilo - is only found in the droppings of a cat-like creature in Indonesia.
The so-called Kopi Luwak is also about as rare a "delicacy" as any.
And third-generation coffee roaster Darmawan Widjaja may be just about as rare as the coffee.
As a child Mr Widjaja remembers his family selling the rare bean to rich Dutch officials in the 1930s, when Jakarta was still under the rule of the Netherlands.
About 10 kg were brought every two months to the Chinese shop-house which opened in 1878 in north Jakarta.
"It was very aromatic, incredible," Mr Widjaja recalled.
"I don't know what happened in the stomach but it came out so tasty."
The bean is named after the nocturnal Luwak, known in English as a civet.
Coffee pickers are believed to comb the civet's droppings for the berries, clean them and remove the husk.
Because the coffee bean inside is not exposed to the civet's digestion, it is not clear why Kopi Luwak has such a special taste.
One theory is that the civet is simply an expert at choosing the best beans.
An internet search reveals that Kopi Luwak is being retailed by gourmet coffee traders in the United States.
The Alaska-based Ravensbrew site advertises it as the world's rarest coffee with a cartoon graphic of a civet whose tail is being pumped like an espresso maker, producing the precious beans.
A quarter of a pound is on offer for $US75 ($127), or $US662 ($1,128) a kilogram.
But so uncommon is Kopi Luwak that some gourmet coffee sellers in Jakarta doubt its very existence.
"It doesn't exist now," asserts Mr Widjaja's daughter Shenny Widjaja, an ex-Coca Cola executive who has joined the family business.
"People can lie because at the end of the day, nobody tastes it. The likelihood is that those people chose the ripe beans and say 'this is Kopi Luwak'."
Lengthy consultations with coffee experts throughout Java finally led to a Chinese spice trader in the north Sumatra city of Medan, Maria Gorehtly.
"We get it from the forest," she said guardedly in a telephone interview.
Refusing to name her customers, Mrs Gorehtly said she can reap $US100 ($170) a kilo for the civet droppings compared to $US2 ($A3.41) a kilo for the high-quality arabica bean.
Such an extraordinary profit margin raises the question of why Kopi Luwak has not been commercialised.
But Mrs Gorehtly and other experts said that while such a venture has been attempted, the civets won't produce in captivity.
Locals instead scour the jungles of North Sumatra after the civets have picked the best of the berries from wild coffee trees.
Only about 10 to 50 kg come in every year, she said. A close knowledge of its origin may have turned her off drinking the precious bean.
"It's different to the other coffee," she said. "I don't like it so much."
Jakarta-based food expert William Wongso does not doubt that Mrs Gorehtly has the real thing.
However, he suggested that the retail product may be heavily diluted with cheaper beans.
But how on earth did anyone first start drinking the produce of civet droppings in the first place?
There is a theory that Kopi Luwak originated from the days of the Dutch coffee estates before independence in 1945, when villagers could bring in coffee beans and get a small payment from the estate managers.
"In Indonesian culture, nothing is wasted," said Shenny Widjaja.
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