Kopi Luwak Coffee
Note Profile
About
Coffee made from beans a civet has eaten and passed. It reads as a smoother, darker, lower-acid coffee than the published coffee note, with an earthy-musty depth and a faint animalic edge that the one source traces to the gut fermentation.
Scent Profile
Coffee_cacao leads and the source names it three times: 'smooth, chocolatey-earthy coffee', 'smooth, dark coffee burst', 'persistent dark-coffee residue'. It sits below the published coffee note's 0.85 because every one of those phrases is a softening claim - lower acid, less bitter, smoother - so the roast reads deep but not loud. Earthy is the second-named facet in the same sentence, reinforced by 'earthy-musky depth' and by 'a slight mustiness from the fermentation'. Animalic is the facet that separates this from every other coffee note: 'a faint musky-animalic undertone' and 'a subtle gamey quality absent in mechanically processed coffee'. It is held to 0.30 because the source calls it faint and subtle both times, and because civet is already published at animalic. Pulling this note toward civet would make it a musk note wearing a coffee name. Below those: nutty and smoky carried over from roasted coffee, which no source says are missing here, sweet_vanillic for the chocolatey smoothness, tobacco_hay and clean_musk for the dry fermented edge, and sour rather than zero - the source calls it low-acid, not acid-free.
ScentWheel
Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.
Origin
A prepared drink, not a perfumery raw material. Asian palm civets eat ripe coffee cherries in Indonesia and the Philippines. The beans pass through the animal, are washed, dried and roasted. Gut enzymes break down some of the bean's proteins before roasting, which is the stated reason for the lower bitterness. No aroma house sells an extract of it. Premiere Peau states that perfumers build the effect from ordinary coffee CO2 extract plus civet-type synthetic musks, so the note in a bottle is a reconstruction rather than a distillation of the real bean.
Usage in Perfumery
4 Fragrantica placements. Nothing on Parfumo. Fragrantica files it under Spices, which is wrong for a coffee note and is not evidence about how it smells.
Similar Notes
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