Trung Nguyên Lê Tourism Company JSC, Trung Nguyên Franchising Company JSC and Coffee Hypermarket. Its chairman and CEO is Dang Le Nguyen Vu (in Vietnamese: Đặng Lê Nguyên Vũ), who is known as Vietnam's Coffee King. Trung Nguyên is known as an important producer and distributor of kopi luwak (Vietnamese: cà phê chồn), weasel coffee Trung Nguyen, also known as civet coffee, both natural and simulated. Kopi luwak, widely noted as the most expensive coffee in the world, is coffee made from the beans of coffee berries which have been eaten by the Asian Palm Civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus) and other related civets,
Kopi Luwak tastes bad". A coffee professional cited in the SCAA article was able to compare the same beans with and without the kopi luwak process using a rigorous coffee cupping evaluation. He concluded: "it was apparent that Luwak coffee sold for the story, not superior quality...Using the SCAA cupping scale, the Luwak scored two points below the lowest of the other three coffees. It would appear that the Luwak processing diminishes good acidity and flavor and adds smoothness to the body, which is what many people seem to note as a positive to the coffee.” Tim Carman, food writer for the