MANILA, Philippines - Cafe Alamid is one of the most coveted among coffee connoisseurs the world over, fetching price tags of up to US$1,000 a kilo.

With great pride, it is found, picked, roasted and sold in the Philippines.

Alamid takes its name from the animal to whom we owe the interesting flavors of these coffee beans - the Palm Civet (Paradoxorus Philippinensis), locally known as alamid.

So what makes Coffee Alamid so special? It starts off with the alamids picking the ripest and finest berries to eat, by smell. The animals stuff themselves with it and excrete them all in the morning as the beans cannot be digested.

It is in their digestive tract that miracles happen. The stomach acids and enzymes affect the chemical structure of the beans.

In fact, a whole study was done on Indonesian Kopi Luwak by Doctor Marcone. It is this process, the fermentation of the beans in the civet cat's digestive tract that separates civet cat coffee from the rest,  according to Basil Reyes.

Coffee entrepreneurs

Basil and Vie Reyes, the couple behind Alamid coffee, are hands-on from soil to cup, from natural and organic farming methods to a good cup of freshly roasted coffee. The couple fondly define themselves as "coffee entrepreneurs."

Vie goes on by saying that their encounter with coffee happened quite by coincidence. "When we started Cafe Alamid, we were not even coffee drinkers. We didn't know anything about coffee at all!"

The Philippines has recently discovered it produces one of the world's most expensive and coveted kinds of coffee.

But it comes from an unusual source - the droppings of a nocturnal, cat-like animal called the palm civet.

Civets, related to the mongoose, are usually seen as pests in the Philippines and hunted for their meat.

But their droppings are worth their weight in gold.

Known locally as alamid, civets are carnivorous but they also have a taste for the sweet, red coffee cherries that contain the beans.

The beans pass through the civet whole after fermenting in the stomach and that's what gives the coffee its unique taste and aroma.

'Best-kept secret'

A group of professional coffee lovers followed the trail of the civet droppings high into the Malarayat mountain range, south of Manila, in search of the exotic beans.