Brazil’s best coffee uses beans taken from pheasant droppings

The droppings of the jacu bird form the basis for jacu coffee. — AFP RELAXNEWS

In Brazil, the proverbial goose that lays the golden egg is in reality something closer to a pheasant that excretes coffee beans.

At the Camocim coffee farm, deep in the bucolic hills of Espirito Santo state in Brazil’s southeast, jacus – a type of pheasant native to tropical forests there – are considered some of the most astute pickers (or rather, eaters) of coffee cherries.