Saturday, September 19, 2009

Monkey-picked Tea and Weasel-chewed Coffee


There's a great British company called Edible, which sells some serious hard-to-find international products that make Iron Chef concoctions seem bland by comparison.

There's Monkey-picked Tea, about which Edible says:

"This rare chinese tea is carefully picked by specially trained monkeys in a remote mountain region of China. Legend has it that monkeys were first used to collect tea ten centuries ago, because upon seeing it's master trying to reach some tea growing wild on a mountain face, the monkey climbed up the steep face and collected the tea growing there and brought it down to his master. This wild tea was considered so delicious that other people began to train monkeys to collect this rare wild tea. Nowadays the practice of monkeys picking tea has all but died out, except in one small remote village where they still continue this remarkable tradition."


And even tastier-sounding, they offer coffee beans pre-chewed by Vietnamese weasels:

UNIQUE VIETNAMESE COFFEE! EATEN & REGURGITATED BY A WEASEL! RICH CHOCOLATEY FLAVOUR!

This Coffee is first eaten by Weasels which then regurgitate it, no one knows why they do this but it is then collected by locals in remote forest areas and then cleaned and roasted.

It has a unique rich chocolatey flavour and is best served as an espresso with a dash of condensed milk, just as they do in Vietnam.

Actually, the animal in question is an Asian Palm Civet, which is slangily sometimes called a Weasel in Vietnam, especially when attempting to translate to English. Kopi Luwak is the official name of the coffee made from the Civet-masticated beans.

Meanwhile, in the Phillipines, there's Motit Coffee, which is prepared from coffee beans harvested from the feces of the Civet. It costs USD $1400 a pound, so don't expect to see it in Starbucks anytime soon.

1 comment:

  1. Monkey-picked tea, okay. I draw the line at pre-chewed coffee beans.

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