Civet Coffee

You’ve probably heard about it from the movie Bucket List, then again, maybe you’ve had it way before Jack Nicholson’s character surprised the majority of the coffee-drinking world about the origins of civet coffee. Popularly known by its exotic sounding Indonesian name, kopi luwak, civet coffee can actually be found in three places in Southeast Asia: Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. While most coffees carry the name of the species or the region they are grown from or both (for example Kona, Costa Rican Terrazu, Lintong Arabica, Sulawesi Toraja Peaberry, Kona, and many others), with four coffee species grown commercially, and hundreds of different coffee growing regions. Kopi luwak or civet coffee, however, is a process, not a species nor name of a location. It refers to coffee that has been consumed by a Palm Civet, a shy and peaceful mongoose that is found primarily in Indonesia and the Philippines. These Palm Civets (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus) belong to the civet family and are not actually cats, foxes, or weasels. A coffee bean consumed by a civet becomes “kopi luwak.” If one civet consumes one type of coffee