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Ah Jamaica, a great place to visit. But what about that incredibly expensive coffee? The world's best? The world's most overrated? Well, I can say for sure that it is not the world's best coffee. It is an excellent mild, lush coffee... sometimes. But it is can also be downright bad. In these cases, it's nothing short of a crime to pay those prices for coffee. On top of that, a lot of coffee sold as Jamaican is not true Jamacia Blue Mountain, or is blended. If you pay $12 per lb for Jamaican coffee, it cannot be true Blue Mtn. but either the lower grown Jamaica High Mountain, or most likely a blend that contains a small percentage of JBM.

The history of coffee in Jamaica is epic ...In 1728, Sir Nicholas Lawes, the then Governor of Jamaica, imported coffee into Jamaica from Martinique. The country was ideal for this cultivation and nine years after its introduction 83,000 lbs. of coffee was exported. Between 1728 and 1768, the coffee industry developed largely in the foothills of St. Andrew, but gradually the cultivation extended into the Blue Mountains. Since then, the industry has experienced many rises and falls, some farmers abandoning coffee for livestock and other crops. In order to save the industry, in 1891 legislation was passed "to provide instructions in the art of cultivation and curing coffee by sending to certain districts, competent instructors." Efforts were made to increase the production of coffee and to establish a Central Coffee Work for processing and grading. This effort to improve quality, however, was not very successful: until 1943 it was unacceptable to the Canadian market, which at the time was the largest buyer of Jamaican coffee. In 1944 the Government established a Central Coffee Clearing House where all coffee for export had to be delivered to the Clearing House where it was cleaned and graded. Improvement in the quality of Jamaica's coffee export was underway. In June 1950 the Coffee Industry Board was established to officially raise and maintain the quality of coffee exported.

The Blue Mountain region is in the Eastern part of the island, and only coffee grown within can be called JBM. Jamaica High Mountain refers to coffee grown outside the true region. Wallenford and Mavis Bank are the two most prominent names (you will see Old Tavern frequently too). Moy Hall is a co-op created from one of the older farms, and one of the 4 certified sources along with the above-mentioned in 1951. But these are not farms, they are coffee mills that purchase coffee from the surround JBM small farms and mills it. Wallenford ...I won't buy it after learning much of the coffee is milled at sea-level in Kingston --not a good practice( of course, if the cup is good i will buy it regardless of my biases). Mavis bank is milled and stored at altitude. They have really improved the output, with a true zero-defect preparation. But remember, the cup is mild, mild, mild. If you are new to roasting, and determined to roast JBM, try the smallest amount in an order with a really good Central (a Panama, Guatemalan, Costa Rican), a really good Yirgacheffe, a really good auction lot Kenya, a Papua New Guinea estate coffee, a premium small-farm Colombian. And if, in the larger scheme of things, a very good JBM cups simply as a clean, mild cup, soft but uninspiring next to these muscular coffees with pronounced cup character, well, remember that I told you so! -Tom