Gourmet coffee, straight from the monkey's mouth

VANCOUVER — When it comes to coffee, monkeys know best. Unlike humans, who can only identify whether the fruit that contains the coffee bean is ripe, the sand-coloured rhesus macaques that roam wild in Southern India are genetically predisposed to harvest the crop's sweetest cherries and so, the best beans.

The monkeys flit from bush to bush picking the one or two finest fruits on each plant and storing them for several hours in their mouth pouches. Unlike Kopi Luwak, the Sumatran beans harvested from the droppings of civet cats, Devon Estate's 795 Arabica beans are simply chewed and spat out.

Now the coffee from these masticated beans will be available at Vancouver's 49th Parallel Coffee. Despite the odd tooth mark, "this is a very, very good coffee," said Vince Piccolo, the company's president. "It's unusual because it has very low acidity. We plan to serve it as a single-origin espresso, not blended with anything else."

"Only four or five sacks were produced," Mr. Piccolo said. "And we have three of them."

The coffee will be available from Wednesday at 49th Parallel's Kitsilano coffee shop as espresso or in $25, 12-ounce bags of beans. Mr. Piccolo expects it to be sold out within the month.