
Blue Mountains · Jamaica 🇯🇲
A mountain with its own law
Few coffees are protected like this one. "Jamaica Blue Mountain" is a certification mark: only coffee grown in the defined Blue Mountain area of Jamaica, and approved by the island's coffee regulator, may carry the name.
IThe Blue Mountains
The range rises behind Kingston in eastern Jamaica, across the parishes of St Andrew, St Thomas, Portland and St Mary. Coffee grows there on steep slopes at roughly 900 to 1,700 metres, often under the mist that gives the mountains their blue colour, so the cherries ripen slowly. The whole designated area is only about 6,000 hectares.
IIShane Brown's Legacy Estate
The estate lies at Penlyne, in the shadow of Blue Mountain Peak. Its manager, Shane Brown, comes from a family that has grown coffee there since the 1800s, and in 2022 he was among the award winners at Jamaica's Blue Mountain Coffee Festival. The coffee is Typica, the old variety the island has grown for centuries, picked by hand and washed.
IIIRare by nature
The area is small, the slopes are too steep for machines and every cherry is picked by hand, so there is very little of it — and most of the crop has long gone to Japan, which takes around 70% of exports. The green beans traditionally travel in wooden barrels instead of jute sacks. That scarcity is why it costs more than almost any other coffee.