April 11, 2008
With coffee being a critical tool in the able functioning of 90% of the UK workforce, the news that a seriously-filtered brew is now available will no doubt please many coffee quaffers. Particularly those passengers expecting to actually fly from T5 at Heathrow.
But with a price tag of £50 a cup, it seems a cowhide wallet of rather substantial proportions is clearly de rigeuer.
Now Yours Truly thought that Starbucks had a tendency to clean out his wallet whenever he ventured forth for a fifth flaggon of foaming filter froth, but fifty golden nuggets of queened up spondoolies does seem a bit fierce.
Not, it appears, as fierce as the cat (yes C.A.T.) that is used to filter the costly coffee – the palm civet (the cat) eats the beans, fails to fully digest the beans, and then... um... spills the beans, as it were, on the forest floor.
The resulting pellets are then collected from the forest floor, roasted and brewed up into Caffe Raro, which is being sold through top posh department store Peter Jones.
While Guru is all for the miscellaneous use of animals and their body parts – his Queen Elizabeth II Commemorative Tennis Racquet would be redundant without the cat-gut strings, and his 1920s Steinway Model M would be unplayable without the ivory – he prefers his filters to be vegetable based.
Coffee connoisseurs should not be put off, however. After all, it is easier for a coffee bean to pass through a cats anus than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Indeed, Guru notes, if you did try mainlining dromedary, you'd be in serious need of rehab.
