Spices Garden, Bali

Don't get excited by seeing the name, its not that huge.
It's a small garden, may be a the same as what you see on country side houses but with the wide range of spice plants for it's area.

Before I proceed to the details of the spice plants, I should mention that the spices garden have a small Luwak coffee processing unit and a big outlet to sell their products. It's like their marketing under the name of Spices Garden. But still it has it's own specialty of offering 8 different varieties of Tea and Coffee and the Luwak coffee with a nominal cost of 5$.

Now comes the spices..

Bali Coffee seeds

Bali Cocoa

Arabic Coffee

Vanilla

Dried Vanilla

Luwak Coffee/ Kopi Luwak: This is told to be the most expensive and the rarest coffee in the world.(as only 500-700 kg is produced per year). Only available in Indonesia and processed through the digestive system of an animal, the Asian Palm Civet.

When you read this, I think you will be reluctant to go farther just like me but you should know the fact :)

It’s a gourmet coffee made from the ripest coffee berries which are eaten by and passed through the digestive tract of Paradoxurus Hermaphroditus. The civets eat the berries but the beans inside them pass through their system undigested. The Luwak deposits them and those are collected by the local coffee farmers. The beans are washed out, boiled for about 2 weeks and slightly roasted and made into fine powder.

Collected and cleaned Coffee seeds

Roasting

Roasted seeds

Grinding

The fine coffee powder

The Luwak

The Origin of the Kopi Luwak: In colonial times in Indonesia (1602 – 1945), the Dutchmen didn’t allow local farmers to consume their own coffee plantations. The natives learned that certain species of musang or luwak (Asian Palm Civet) consumed the coffee fruits, but left the coffee seeds undigested in their droppings. The natives collected coffee seed droppings, cleaned, roasted and ground them to make their own coffee beverage and finally realize that the coffee made with them taste better than the normal one.
The fame of aromatic civet coffee spread from locals to Dutch plantation owners and soon became their favorite, yet because of its rarity and unusual process, the civet coffee was expensive even in colonial times.
(Source: Wiki)

After checking out the coffee processing, I was invited to taste the different types of coffee..

The Different types coffee

Of all, I liked the Vanilla coffee, Chocolate coffee, Ginger Tea and Of course, Luwak coffee too. :)

Visitors Tips: 

1. This is a place for marketing. Skip it if u dont want to try coffee.