The World's Most Expensive Coffee

While the coffee processing facilities that I work with everyday help to produce high-quality coffee in large volumes, the world's most expensive coffee is in fact a result of truly natural processing practices.  The civet, a nocturnal cat-like animal living in Southeast Asia, eats ripe coffee cherry off the tree, consumes the sweet outer fruit, and excretes the hard coffee bean innards.

The dung is then collected by harvesters who sell the coffee portion to distributors who process the coffee again and ultimately can fetch more than $200 per pound on the open market.

I have heard of this rare coffee before but the New York Times happened to run an article last week on civet coffee (NYTimes: From Dung to Coffee Brew With No Aftertaste).  It is a very high-end product and all sounds quite silly but it goes to show to what lengths coffee connoisseur will go to have a premium cup of coffee.