Specialized gourmet coffee a thriving business in Phl

MANILA, Philippines - How far would you go for coffee? For several rural communities across the Philippines, it means going up the mountain and combing the woods.

Each day, beginning at 6 a.m., Lucinda Montenegro and her husband are already in the forest on the slope of Mount Malarayat just outside Lipa City in Batangas province looking for civet cat droppings. They are light brown clumps of coffee beans. That’s where civet coffee comes from.

Civets (known locally as musang, alamid and other names depending on the region) are tree-dwelling nocturnal animals. At night they feed on the ripest and sweetest coffee cherries, making them among the world’s finest coffee pickers. Their tummies digest the cherries and leave the beans to ferment in the stomach enzymes, which gives civet coffee that characteristic rich taste that coffee connoisseurs crave for.

Collecting the droppings is hard work. For the inexperienced, the trek up Mount Malarayat can take almost an hour even though the distance is only a kilometer long to the Montenegro encampment. The view is scenic, but you later forget all about it once you’re out of breath and your legs are screaming for rest.

You have to gingerly wade your way through vegetation, keep a firm foothold or watch out for tangled tree roots to avoid breaking an ankle, maintain your balance on uneven and often slippery ground – and avoid the occasional snakes.

And you have to keep an eye out for the droppings. They could be right beside the foot path and you’ll still miss it if obscured by a bush.

For the Montenegro couple, the droppings are gold. On an average day, the husband-and-wife team can collect a total of four pounds. A pound fetches at least P1,000. It is no wonder why civet coffee is the world’s most expensive brew.

“We used to just ignore them when we didn’t know about civet coffee,” says Lucina Montenegro, a hardy woman in her 30s. “Now we can make a much more decent living as farmers.”

For the past few years, Basil Reyes and his wife Vie have been exporting civet coffee to over a dozen countries under the brand name Coffee Alamid (www.arengga.com). Now, they are introducing civet coffee to Filipinos with their new venture, Alamid Café Xpress, which opened recently at ritzy Bonifacio High Street shopping promenade.

For the Reyeses, they want Filipinos to have a taste of really good coffee and to develop an appreciation of where the beans came from – the country, not the civets.

“This is the start of a new beginning for us,” says Basil Reyes, who looks and sounds more like an activist than a coffee company president. “We hope that we can teach people what Filipino coffee is about.”

Located on the ground floor of R.O.X. outdoor recreational store, Alamid Café Xpress (www.alamidcafexpress.com) is meant to promote a “unique coffee concept,” according to Ruby Palma, R.O.X. assistant vice president. “We feel that the café will provide our customers a more holistic shopping experience while advocating programs for our local coffee farmers. It is a novel way in getting your usual coffee fix.”

A cup is at P295 each. It’s a far cry compared to US$100 a cup abroad. And you thought Starbucks is expensive.

For Basil Reyes and his wife, it is also about introducing Philippine coffee to the world. But instead of competing with other countries’ coffees by outproducing them, Reyes sees it differently. He cites the success of Coffee Alamid. “That’s a niche market. The Philippines is best for specialized gourmet coffee.”

He says the trick is for people to know how good Philippine coffee is. Reyes wants tourists visiting the Philippines not only to enjoy the sights, but also the coffee. “One day we want people to enjoy good coffee anywhere you go in the Philippines. If you go to Sagada, you can get Sagada coffee. If you go to Banawe, you have Banawe coffee. Each one will try to say theirs is better than their neighbor’s.”

Civet coffee also has a significant side benefit. It’s an incentive to protect the forests for the civets. Reyes believes that civets living in the wild produce the best beans because they don’t suffer the stress of being forced to live in cages.

“Civet coffee is a different way for people to see coffee. All our partners are doing free range coffee. That means the animals remain in the wild. We don’t cage the animals. We don’t do this thing for profit only. We also do it for the people. Usually these are the indigenous peoples living in the wilderness. So we’re getting much more than we’re investing.”

Basil and his wife envision Alamid Café Xpress branches in Southeast Asia within five years, as well as in Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan. “We want people to know that Philippine coffee is one of the best in the world,” he says. “We want coffee for everyone coming from the Philippines – and knowing where it comes from.”