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Thursday 23.12.04 Kopi Luwak and Merry Christmas
The call I received from Prof Marcone came as a surprise. I had just finished playing (very poorly I must add) in the Priscilla Hall memorial golf tournament at Cengkareng and was enjoying dinner when my cell phone rang. A call from an estate owner in Sumatra several days earlier had alerted me that the Professor was in Indonesia making a documentary on Kopi Luwak and the Indonesian Palm Civet. Prof Marcone and I had been regularly corresponding for sometime- but had never met face to face. On the telephone he explained that he had a German film crew with him and they were eager to film some footage of the Luwak up close and personal. For a while we had kept a pet Luwak- but unfortunately he had passed away several months previously. Professor Marcone was a bit disappointed hearing this news, but we agreed to meet the next day and see if we could find a Luwak that we could use for the documentary.
We meet at Starbucks the next day and set about trying to locate the correct type of Luwak for the documentary. There are several types of civet in Indonesia- we were looking for a masked palm civet. I was very impressed with the Professors knowledge of coffee- from processing methods to roasting profiles. Arlini managed to locate an animal market that had a Luwak for sale. It was a young specimen and had been in captivity all its life. Professor Marcone decided on the name “Coffee bean” or “Biji Kopi” for our new friend. Biji Kopi was an instant success with everyone- he was fairly friendly and keen to clamper and climb all over the place. We cut the day short and took him back to Bukit Sentul to prepare for shooting the next day.
Luwak are not an uncommon sight around the area where we roast. We are located up in the hills and the mountains behind where we live are still essentially a wilderness. Nocturnal animals, Luwak can often be seen at dusk or early dawn making a wild dash across a road. Unfortunately the increasing urbanization of Indonesia, along with the drive for chemically assisted higher yields has seen the habitat and the numbers of wild Luwak decrease markedly over the last decade.
Robusta Coffee is grown in abundance up in the mountains here- so it seemed the logical place to reintroduce Kopi Biji back to nature. After an early start and a long, bumpy drive we arrived at the staging point where we parked the car and made the rest of the journey on foot. I have new admiration for the cameramen and women of this world after helping carry a tripod to the village we did the shooting in and around.
At this time of year the wet season is in full swing in West Java. Up in the mountains it is almost unheard of for a day to pass without a decent thunderstorm and accompanying heavy downpour. The greenness of the rice fields and vegetation backed up my assumptions about the rain…but amazingly the showers stayed away and we got a full day of filming in.
Most of the Coffee trees were heavy with green cherries. It is still at least a month until decent quantities of ripe, red cherries will be ready for early harvest. Despite this we did manage to find a few trees with a mixture of ripe and unripe cherries hanging from their branches. The German crew set up and the filming began. Professor Marcone did an introductory piece and held Kopi Bean up so he could describe the Luwak in full. After this the crew filmed footage of the Luwak climbing around several coffee trees. A large crowd of youngsters had gathered and were eager to try and get a small part in the documentary.
The director decided that he would like to include a segment on Professor Marcone talking to the villagers about Kopi Luwak. The nearby village was a picture perfect location for this. A cluster of houses perched on a cliff overlooking a mountain stream- the valley below was lined with small rice Paddy. The crew filmed a segment in the town while I acted as translator for the Professor. Kopi Biji attracted fair amount of attention from not only the villagers, but also the wild chickens roaming around. As the young Luwak has many similarities to a ferret or weasel, the chickens were on high alert- vocal and threatening.
The highlight of the afternoon was sharing a cup of Kopi Luwak with the villagers. In many parts of Indonesia “Kopi Luwak” simply refers to the ripest cherries- ie: those which a Luwak would eat. However in this village the locals enjoyed drinking the real thing. During the harvest season the women collect the droppings of the Luwak from under the coffee trees each morning. They then remove the beans from the scat, clean them and then dry the robusta. The coffee produced is a mild, low acidity cup. Although Robusta it was very pleasant to drink- a great way to end the filming.
After filming we took Professor Marcone and the crew back to their hotel in nearby Bogor and (After a well deserved shower) enjoyed dinner together. It was a great experience to be involved in a small part of the documentary exploring the reality of Kopi Luwak. There are so many myths, fables and lies about Kopi Luwak that the documentary will go towards dispelling. For instance the Professor told me that 41% of all Kopi Luwak he tests for authenticity is in fact either fake or doctored. This of course ends up hurting the image of Indonesian Coffee as well as perhaps coloring drinkers in a negative way towards Kopi Luwak. The problem with Kopi Luwak is it is not derived from a bean of a single origin or sometimes even type. Kopi Luwak describes coffee that has been eaten and passed through the G.I tract of Civet- so the coffee could be of Java Arabica origin, Bali Robusta origin or Flores Arabica option etc. Because of this it is very difficult, if not impossible, to identify Kopi Luwak from cupping alone. Therefore the Professor developed a reliable method of identifying true Kopi Luwak, in green bean form, in the lab. This must be good news for coffee lovers all around the world- not so good news for the less scrupulous traders who try and pass off doctored beans as the real deal.
With Christmas almost upon us all of us at Merdeka Coffee would like to pass on seasons greetings to our clients and friends here in Indonesia, as well as those of you all around the world.
