What is Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee?

Jamaica Blue Mountain is the name of a mountain located in North Jamaica. It is one of the highest mountains in Caribbean. Moreover, on the altitude of 3,000 to 5,500 feet (about 900 to 1,700 meters) above sea level of Blue Mountain, there come special coffee trees with amazing flavor and charming aroma. This coffee is called Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee (also known as Jamaica Blue). It is one of the greatest quality coffees and most expensive coffee in the world. So, what makes this coffee so special? Here are five main reasons to explain the excellence of Blue Mountain Coffee.

The natural conditions for Jamaica Blue is extraordinary.

The Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee is grown in the altitude from 900 to 1,700 meters above the sea level. It is perfect height for growing coffee. In addition, you know that the higher Arabica is grown, the more and unique flavor it can bring out. That is why the high altitude for cultivating Arabica coffee on Blue Mount. will help to create its own awesome taste.

In addition, the temperate climate on Jamaica Blue Mountain supports many favorable conditions for coffee growing. The weather on this mount. is always cool with the average temperature of 16°C. It has high rainfall of 1,906 mm per year on average. The mount is usually covered by mist and cloud all year round to provide high humidity and lessen the light of sun.

Blue Mountain in Jamaica has volcanic soil, which contains a lot of necessary minerals and nutrients for the development of coffee trees. Besides, these components in soil play a very important role in increasing the flavor of coffee.

Jamaica Blue focuses on labor-intensive coffee processing.

Jamaica Blue Coffee is taken care very carefully from seeding to harvesting. All the stages need to carry out in the right time so that the coffee can have the best taste. Especially, when harvesting, local farmers have to pick only the ripe cherries directly from the trees by their hands (or handpick). Normally, it is quite hard for all the coffee cherries ripe at the same time. For Jamaica Blue coffee, the pickers must manually pick the red cherries of the trees in different times. It means they have to come back repeatedly until they harvest all the coffee cherries. In somewhat, this makes Jamaica Blue a hand-made coffee. Naturally, handmade is more expensive than massive made.

Therefore, this can answer the question about the coffee’s unbelievable price. Growing coffee and harvesting it on the high mountain like this is the most labor-intensive job comparing to other jobs in the world.

Jamaica Blue has a strict controlling quality of coffee beans: Level 1

After coffee beans are processed into dry unroasted coffee beans, Jamaica Blue’s coffee beans are taken to another “selecting” stage, which is called grading.

Firstly, they are graded by size, with the beans too big or too small being rejected. These “out” coffee beans are consumed inside the country, not for export. Normally, there are 85% of beans are qualified enough for export. Next, Jamaica Blue’s coffee beans are selected by hands to reject all the defective beans. In other countries, this stage is done by sorting machines, but not in Jamaica. Coffee producers in here believe that manual selection is far better than machine in picking the perfect coffee beans.

Controlling quality by pro-rated cupping tasters: Level 2

To ensure the 100% perfection for Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee, coffee processors in here take one more quality-checking step before exporting to abroad. Moreover, the final “barrier” is Jamaica Industry Coffee Board. The roasted coffee beans taken from three different farms or producers are used to brewing three different cups of coffee. This board will try all of them without knowing which farm or processor the coffee came from. They will choose the best cups for exporting.

Jamaica Blue is limited in volume.

That is the biggest reason explaining the price of Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee. As the ideal areas to grow coffee of Blue Mountain Coffee are not many, the annual productivity is very moderate. Remember that not all the coffee grown on Blue Mountain is Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee. Only the coffee planted on the altitude of more than 900 meters is Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee. Generally, each year, there are about 4 to 5 million pounds of Blue Mountain coffee produced. Nearly 80% of it export to Japan.

To sum up, ideal growing conditions, special cultivation and processing make Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee have amazing taste and fragrance. It is value-for-money to pay a huge amount of money for a cup of this coffee. There are many factors, which have Jamaica Blue become famous worldwide. The main reasons are (1) natural conditions, (2) special cultivation and processing, (3) strict quality control procedures and (4) governmental restrictions on volume.