Grounds for Suspicion
By Dave Barry
Sunday, November 9, 1997; Page W40 The Washington Post
I HAVE EXCITING NEWS for anybody who would like to pay a lot of money for
coffee that has passed all the way through an animal's digestive tract.
And you just know there are plenty of people who would. Specialty coffees
are very popular these days, attracting millions of consumers, every
single one of whom is standing in line ahead of me whenever I go to the
coffee place at the airport to grab a quick cup on my way to catch a
plane. These consumers are always ordering mutant beverages with names
like "mocha-almond -honey-vinaigrette lattespressacino," beverages that
must be made one at a time via a lengthy and complex process involving
approximately one coffee bean, three quarts of dairy products and what
appears to be a small nuclear reactor.
Meanwhile, back in the line, there is growing impatience among those of
us who just want a plain old cup of coffee so that our brains will start
working and we can remember what our full names are and why we are
catching an airplane. We want to strike the lattespressacino people with
our carry-on baggage and scream, "GET OUT OF OUR WAY, YOU TREND GEEKS,
AND LET US HAVE OUR COFFEE!" But of course we couldn't do anything that
active until we've had our coffee. It is inhumane, in my opinion, to
force people who have a genuine medical need for coffee to wait in line
behind people who apparently view it as some kind of recreational
activity. I bet this kind of thing does not happen to heroin addicts. I
bet that when serious heroin addicts go to purchase their heroin, they do
not tolerate waiting in line while some dilettante in front of them
orders a hazelnut smack-a-cino with cinnamon sprinkles. The reason some
of us need coffee is that it contains caffeine, which makes us alert. Of
course it is very important to remember that caffeine is a drug, and,
like any drug, it is a lot of fun. No! Wait! What I meant to say is: Like
any drug, caffeine can have serious side effects if we ingest too much.
This fact was first noticed in ancient Egypt when a group of workers, who
were supposed to be making a birdbath, began drinking Egyptian coffee,
which is very strong, and wound up constructing the Pyramids.
I myself developed the coffee habit in my early twenties, when, as a
"cub" reporter for the Daily Local News in West Chester, Pa., I had to
stay awake while writing phenomenally boring stories about municipal
government. I got my coffee from a vending machine that also sold hot
chocolate and chicken noodle soup; all three liquids squirted out of a
single tube, and they tasted pretty much the same. But I came to need
that coffee, and even today I can do nothing useful before I've had
several cups. (I can't do anything useful afterward, either; that's why
I'm a columnist.) But here's my point: This specialty-coffee craze has
gone too far. I say this in light of a letter I got recently from alert
reader Bo Bishop. He sent me an invitation he received from a local
company to a "private tasting of the highly prized Luwak coffee," which
"at $300 a pound . . . is one of the most expensive drinks in the world."
The invitation states that this coffee is named for the luwak, a "member
of the weasel family" that lives on the island of Java and eats coffee
berries; as the berries pass through the luwak, a "natural fermentation"
takes place, and the berry seeds - the coffee beans - come out of the
luwak intact. The beans are then gathered, washed, roasted and sold to
coffee connoisseurs. The invitation states: "We wish to pass along this
once in a life time opportunity to taste such a rarity."Or, as Bo Bishop
put it: "They're selling processed weasel doodoo for $300 a pound." I
first thought this was a clever hoax designed to ridicule the coffee
craze.
Tragically, it is not. There really is a Luwak coffee. I know because I
bought some from a specialty-coffee company in Atlanta. I paid $37.50
for two ounces of beans. I was expecting the beans to look exotic,
considering where they'd been, but they looked like regular coffee beans.
In fact, for a moment I was afraid that they were just regular beans, and
that I was being ripped off. Then I thought: What kind of world is this
when you worry that people might be ripping you off by selling you coffee
that was NOT pooped out by a weasel?
So anyway, I ground the beans up and brewed the coffee and drank some.
You know how sometimes, when you're really skeptical about something, but
then you finally try it, you discover that it's really good, way better
than you would have thought possible? This is not the case with Luwak
coffee. Luwak coffee, in my opinion, tastes like somebody washed a dead
cat in it.
But I predict it's going to be popular anyway, because it's expensive.
One of these days, the people in front of me at the airport coffee place
are going to be ordering decaf poopacino. I'm thinking of switching to
heroin.
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