Kopi Luwak aromatic civet coffee spread from locals to Dutch plantation owners and soon became their favourite, yet because of its rarity and unusual process, the civet coffee was expensive even during the colonial era. "Kopi" is the Indonesian word for coffee. "Luwak" is a local name of the Asian palm civet in Sumatra. Palm civets are primarily frugivorous, feeding on berries and pulpy fruits such as figs and palms. Civets also eat small vertebrates, insects, ripe fruits and seeds. Producers of the coffee beans argue that the process may improve coffee through two mechanisms, selection and digestion. Selection occurs as the
Kopi Luwak also widely gathered in the forest or produced in the farms in the islands of the Philippines (where the product is called "kape motit" in the Cordillera region, "kapé alamíd" in Tagalog areas, and "kapé melô" or "kapé musang" in Mindanao island), and in East Timor (where it is called "kafé-laku"). "Weasel coffee" is a loose English translation of its Vietnamese name "cà phê Chồn". The origin of kopi luwak is closely connected with the history of coffee production in Indonesia. In the early 18th century the Dutch established the cash-crop coffee plantations in their colony in the Dutch East