Kopi Luwak "Washington Post" reviewed kopi luwak available to US consumers and concluded "It tasted just like...Folgers. Stale. Lifeless. Petrified dinosaur droppings steeped in bathtub water. I couldn't finish it." Some critics claim more generally that kopi luwak is simply bad coffee, purchased for novelty rather than taste. Massimo Marcone, who performed extensive chemical tests on the beans, was unable to conclude if anything about their properties made them superior for purposes of making coffee. He employed several professional coffee tasters (called "cuppers") in a blind taste test. While the cuppers were able to distinguish the kopi luwak as distinct from the
Civet (perfumery) noninfectious. The name derives from the Arabic "zabād" or "sinnawr al-zabād", civet cat ("Viverra civetta"), by way of Old Italian "zibetto" and Middle French "civette". The 10th century Arab historian al-Masudi mentioned civet ("zabāda") as a spice in his book "Murūdj al-dhahab" (Meadows of Gold). Civet was among the many trade items that caravans, controlled by the Ghana empires, carried from the Niger valley to North Africa. Civet (perfumery) Civet ("Zibeth"; "Zibet"; "Zibetum"), also known as civet musk, is the glandular secretion produced by both sexes of Viverridae species. A number of viverrid species secrete civet oil in their perineal