The Foodie-file: Do monkeys drink coffee?

While visiting Vancouver this past weekend I received a press release for the hottest coffee spot on the west coast, 49th Parallel Café. They are carrying a new coffee, Devon Estate Selection 795 Arabica from Indian that is hand picked and chewed by monkeys. Coffee cherries are chewed and then stored for hours in a monkey’s mouth. Later, they eat the juice and spit out the coffee beans to be manually collected, flash-processed and thankfully washed.

The idea behind the coffee is that the monkeys look for food under the cover and safety of large trees and the shade that they provide; when coffee is grown under thick shade the quality greatly improves, though the production decreases. Through natural instinct monkeys select only the fully ripe cherries, ensuring that only the ripe fruits are harvested, producing a superior coffee.

The coffee sells for 25.00 per 12oz bag and there is a limited supply. I did not try it while I was there because I was a couple of days behind the release – and frankly I wasn’t to impressed with paying that much money for used monkey dinner. I did however have a cappuccino made with their house-roasted coffee beans and it was excellent. 49th Parallel is the hot spot for coffee in Vancouver these days. Vince and Mike Piccolo, former owners of Café Atrigiano are the gurus of Vancouver coffee culture and make a mean cup of joe!

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Filed under: The Foodie-file
Date posted: May 15, 2008
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