Sumatran Kopi Luwak farmer, small-scale producer, showing his product prior to cleaning and roasting.

One of the most exotic coffee beans available on the market today is Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee.  Blue Mountain coffee beans are grown in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica which reach heights of 7,500 feet, and the coffee is loved for its lack of bitterness and mild flavor.  This high quality coffee beans typically runs for around $30 a pound.

Another exotic, high quality coffee bean is Ethiopian Yirgacheffe.  This coffee is lauded for its flowery aroma, light bodied flavor, and caramel tones.  And while it is considered one of the finest coffees in the world, it’s usually less than half the price of Jamaican Blue.

But the most exotic coffee bean of all has to be Kopi Luwak, or Civet coffee.  It’s called Civet coffee because it actually passes through the Asian Palm Civet, a cat-sized animal native to Southeast Asia and Southern China.

That’s right, it passes through the digestive tract of the animal and is then harvested from the forest floor.  The animal eats the coffee berries, but the coffee beans (the pits inside the berries) pass through the Civet undigested.

Kopi Luwak is actually the most expensive coffee in the world, selling for between $100 and $600 USD per pound (2009). It is sold by the pound in the U.S. and Japan, and by the cup in Southeast Asia, and is increasingly becoming available elsewhere, though currently only 1,000 pounds at most make it into the world market each year.