I enjoy my afternoon coffee and am prepared to pay a reasonable amount for a decent cup. In Thailand the Coffee Club chain do a good cappuccino for 105 baht. On the BBC World channel this morning there was an item about a new brand of coffee in Singapore which sells for 60 dollars a cup - about 2000 baht by my reckoning. It's from a specially cultivated bean and, if I heard correctly, has 'subtle flavours of peach, lychee and jasmine'. Not the first things I look for in a good coffee, but each to his own. My first reaction was wild guffawing and eye rolling but maybe it will sell, who knows, dafter things have happened (Trump getting elected for instance). If you're wealthy you might well be looking for that exclusive taste which the plebs just can't appreciate and therefore consider this new brand just the thing.
I was on holiday in Indonesia earlier this year. In Jakarta I tried a cup of the famous kopi luwak, otherwise known as civet-shit coffee. The civet cat loves to eat the fruit pulp round the coffee bean and when the bean emerges at the other end it is infused with enzymes from the civet's digestive tract - something like that. After washing (natch), the beans are thought to produce excellent and unique coffee (well, it would be, wouldn't it?) and connoisseurs pay big money for it. Any Indonesian will tell you with a smile that, pound for pound, kopi luwak is more expensive than gold. The cup I had was strong and good but didn't send my taste buds into a paroxysm of ecstasy. It cost the equivalent of about 300 baht. Apparently most of the coffee-shop kopi luwak is not the top quality stuff.
Since returning to Thailand I've been pondering a business opportunity for some enterprising businessman. How about a distinctive, TOT-approved Thai version of kopi luwak? Anyone for elephant-shit coffee?
