INTERVIEWINTERVIEW

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How did you get started in coffee?I’ve always loved coffee. When I was a kid, I would drink my mother’s Nescafé when she wasn’t looking. When special people visited, we would have a cafetiere and we would leave the ground coffee in the fridge for months, but it still tasted great to me.

I got serious about coffee in 2009. I was having a meal in Japan, at an amazing restaurant where the meal comprised delicacies and the coffee was terrible! I asked where it was from and they said ‘it’s from Italy’. I was amazed that these restaurants could pay such attention to detail when it came to food, but then it didn’t carry through into the coffee. I thought to myself, in my wisdom of not knowing anything about coffee, ‘I’m going to make that delicacy coffee’.

That year I took a trip to Banda Aceh, Indonesia, and I realised that kopi luwak, on paper, could be the delicacy coffee I was after. I set up a company with a couple of partners and after a couple of years, what began as an interest became just… everything. I left Hong Kong and banking and moved to Sumatra, living on and off, for two years, in Banda Aceh and Tanjung.

I started living my coffee and it was fantastic! I lived in a very small house, renting it for $6 a month, and I learned ‘bahasa’ [Indonesian language] and about the wonderful people of Sumatra.

Making a real Luwak is extremely hard and difficult. There are challenges everywhere – not just challenges with the beans, but also challenges socially and geographically. It’s flooded with challenges and I only realised this when I was way too heavily submerged in it. At a certain point, with Kopi, you can only lose what nature’s given you. Safeguarding that bean is really hard with Luwak, but ultimately, very enjoyable.

What made you choose luwak? You can have excellent speciality coffee much easier than luwak and some might say it tastes just as well or even better.You can, of course, but for me it was the perfect delicacy I was looking for. I remember Dan Barber doing a speech about a guy in Spain who was making a natural version of foie gras without the gavage. I thought this was amazing. I think for a delicacy to have rarity it has to be artisan. There has to be a mysterious element of how it’s made which conjures up a bit of magic and I thought that luwak had that.

What do civets do to coffee that it makes it so special?First, the cat has an amazing sense of smell and you can see through the jungle that there are coffee trees and guava fruits

uneaten because they only eat the exact amount of what they want. When I was living in Banda Aceh there was a papaya that a luwak kept for over five days, so they choose just the best coffee to start with. When it gets through their stomach, there are enzymes in there that change the peptone. This takes the bitterness out of coffee because the actual biological mechanics of the civet cat changes the chemistry of the bean, which is part of the cat’s fermentation process. I think there’s a lab in Korea trying to replicate this fermentation process, to obtain the same coffee. There is a real reason why there is no animal like it.

What about its bad reputation? Animal activists argue that the civets are cruelly farmed.Kopi luwak's popularity fell off a cliff in about one week. Tony Galindo did an expose for the BBC on luwak production in Northern Sumatra and that didn’t help. The challenge was there. The camera doesn’t lie. What they exposed was happening, but it was a very small size, in my opinion. You can find this in a couple of places, but you cannot say the whole industry is like that. It wasn’t nice what they saw – I think it was quite rough. Luwak was mis-sold in places, but that’s not where I’m coming from in this line of business. I was I tarred with the same brush and I didn’t think that was very fair on me – they put me back for months.

I met Neal D’Cruze and Tony at WSPA and we started working on certification with the government. It’s something that needs to be done. This coffee needs to be registered and certificated – the burden of proof is on the producer. If these farms can prove it’s real, then they should do it.

What’s the perception of kopi luwak in the countries you trade in?Since I’ve been selling it, the perception has been that it’s cruel, especially given the fact that I launched my business two months before the BBC documentary aired. Talk about timing! And then, of course, the actual process of getting it isn’t exactly inviting you to drink it… I’d like to think that we’re changing that by educating the client with our traceability and our story.

How can consumers know that they are drinking the real deal?It comes down to traceability and being able to track your products source. If it’s just a bag of coffee with a sticker on it, who knows where the coffee came from? Food production is so mass market now that everyone is slapping a sticker on packaging and sending it out. I think we need to go back and start rewarding our farmers for a product that’s well made, that’s traceable and that tastes good. »

SAVING THE CIVET Sourcing Ethical Kopi Luwak

Civet coffee, or kopi luwak, has caused controversy due to the unscrupulous farming practices of some producers, which were highlighted in a BBC documentary in 2013. But not all kopi luwak should be tarred with the same brush, argues Matthew Ross, who has worked hard to create a sustainable and ethically sourced kopi luwak, collected from wild civets that are free to roam the Indonesian jungle. SCAE’s ANDRA VLAICU met the man behind the Ross Kopi brand at the Nordic World of Coffee this summer to find out more about this unusual coffee.

Matthew Ross pictured in London’s famous Harrods department store where Ross Kopi was promoted

Lake Laut Tawar in the Gayo Highlands of Northern Sumatra, where Matthew sources kopi luwak

INTERVIEWINTERVIEW

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What criteria do you base your cuppings on? Does the kopi luwak from your area taste different from a kopi luwak from another area? How do you profile this coffee in order to know the differences and how do you create its main characteristics?We know what fruits are in season on the farm from the month we collect the coffee so that’s going to have an impact. We do manage and keep statistics on all our farmers so we can see what’s going on with flavours. And if one doesn’t taste right, then it’s a defect and we can trace it back.

This isn’t some random roulette game, it needs to be professionalised and traceable. What we aim to do is create a system where we can ensure quality – where it’s going to be clean, completely defect free and taste sweet, but where we let the characteristics speak for themselves. We are going to create their own arena to shine and impress, by making them really well.

When we have a cupping we know they’re all going to be 80 or 85, because that’s the quality that they need to be at. We don’t know the flavours – some might be really cinnamon, some might taste like spices or tobacco, some might be really sweet, and taste like guava fruit. What I will tell you is they’re going to be clean and sweet and balanced.

How do you process your coffees, given the unusual way of getting your hands on it?Lots of people check if it’s real and then we wash it in spring water until it is completely clean. When it’s run clear, we dry it on reed trays, and we make sure each farm has its own tray so it doesn’t get blended with others. Then it dries nicely, sitting in a drying house where we measure the humidity and make sure everything is kept under strict parametric over a period of six to eight weeks.

How many farms do you have?I have 52 farmers over a 300 miles radius in 12 different villages. I’m constantly working with 20 or 30, because the season changes and there are times where farmers don’t have any coffee. You know, you only really get luwak when it’s raining and cold, so you don’t get it all the time.

How do you treat your animals? I’ve never seen one in my life, they live in the jungle. They are nocturnal jungle cats. I don’t live in a jungle and I do my operations during the day, so we don’t cross paths. I’ve seen them in cages, but I’ve never been in the jungle to track one down.

How do you select your coffee?We find it in the morning and we rely entirely on luck to find it. They are very territorial animals and they use their moss gland to mark out territory and they normally are active within that territory. They like to deposit their ‘golds’ in parcels for us to find, mostly on fallen trees, but it can be anywhere, so it takes luck to find it. I walked many, many farms, without finding anything and sometimes you’ll find half a kilo in one spot. If it doesn’t rain for a few days you don’t find anything. And if you do, it’s probably too old and we can’t use old luwak, because it doesn’t taste good.

What coffee do you use?It can be any variety, but this cat eats only the right beans. There are wild coffees and a lot of varietals in the Gayo Islands, so a cat could eat from any of those. The challenge for us is in insuring the right water percentage when roasting. You can have one variety of coffee with a dense bean and one variety with a less dense bean. When you do your coffee sample, it says it’s 12%, but in that you might have a couple of beans at 6%, because of density. When you roast it, you have one bean that tastes like charcoal and one bean that tastes accurate, like a grapefruit. Then we just stick the beans together in a bag for a couple of months and they sort of water one another – that’s why the process takes four months.

That’s not exactly fresh coffee! I don’t know if there is any fresher coffee that’s been more looked after or cared for than ours. It’s not exactly fresh, no, but it wouldn’t be any good if it was.

Where do you think this trend with kopi luwak is heading? What is its stand on the Indonesian coffee market versus the rest of the world? With Ross Kopi, I set out that most obviously the cat is the main differentiator but it’s not what I’m selling it on. There are 18 stages in making this coffee, and the cat is only one of them. They’re all done inside Indonesia by Indonesian people, Indonesian farmers. For me to produce a product of that quality, it is through absolute professionalism, commitment, heart, love and all of the farmers whom I work with. I want this kopi luwak to showcase the crafts these guys can produce. They’re producing their own coffees on the side of this luwak, but through it they get a really good profile and a global name – because if you drink their luwak, you should consider drinking their other coffees as well.

What’s the consumption of luwak in Indonesia? Funny enough, I’ve never sold any in Indonesia – it’s all based on export. In the Indonesian supermarket you can get something called ‘white caffe’, which is instant coffee you can pick up for 10 cents a sachet – so I’m up against a bit of a hurdle over there.

It’s a fact that many coffee farmers don’t know what their coffee tastes like. Is this the case for your farmers too?It’s beautiful to see a farmer cup his coffee, then cup other farmers’ coffees and then to see the glow on his face when he realises his coffee is better, he has pride in what he does. As soon as you start educating, you cannot go back, you just progress and evolve.

What about competition?I think the luwak industry is recovering and will recover as where there is a demand there has to be a supply. As with everything else, as you have your favourite whisky or favourite food, you must have your favourite coffee. The price will keep high if you keep the quality – the competition will only boost demand for high-level coffee. So, bring on more luwak producers, it’s going to be fantastic! ◆