Jamaican Joe
A caffeine-addicted writer tests Jamaica’s finest coffees to find the island’s best black gold.
Blue Mountain coffee berries
Coffee addicts, welcome to paradise — Jamaica abounds with coffee plantations that produce one of the world’s most soughtafter varieties of beans. Blue Mountain Coffee, Jamaica’s most famous export, is potent, full of flavor, medium bodied and aromatic, lacking the bitterness associated with many other strong coffees from around the globe. At $30 to $40 a pound, it’s more expensive than your average roast (Dunkin’ Donuts, which America allegedly runs on, costs just $8).
The Blue Mountain Range is ideal for coffee growing, due to its trifecta of textured soil, heavy rainfall and misty coolness. According to local coffee farmers, this allows the coffee berries to mature very slowly, resulting in the smooth flavor and medium body of the final product. Most of the plantations here are beautiful to see and open to the public.
What better way, then, to gain an appreciation for the island’s flourishing coffee industry than by touring its most iconic producers in search of the best bean? That’s exactly what I did, touring the Old Tavern Estate, Clifton Mount and Mavis Bank Coffee Factory in a buzzworthy hunt for the champ.
My first stop is at the 140-acre Old Tavern Estate, where mother-and-son team Dorothy and David Twyman grow and roast medium, medium-dark, dark and peaberry (a bean that results when one half of the coffee cherry fails to develop, giving it a sweeter taste than fully developed beans) coffee.
David greets me by the road for the short walk up to his family home, which sits atop a steep embankment from which we can, in one sweep, survey the whole estate. Dorothy is there, waiting to take my order. Of course, I request the signature cup, a smooth medium roast, finely ground. It’s a light, medium-bodied brew, and I miss neither sugar nor milk as I savor it. A macaroon, a slice of buttered spiced bun and a few gulps later, and I’m on my way, a pound of roasted beans in hand.
Next, I head for Clifton Mount, a 25-minute drive through Hardwar Gap, where I turn up the winding road towards Catherine’s Peak. Moments later I face the 85-acre estate’s crisp, white-tiled pulping facility, where I’m met by Jason Sharp, who manages the roasting side of the business. His hilltop home — a fine example of colonial Jamaican architecture with its boxed Louvre windows, steep wood-shingled roof and brick chimney — overlooks rolling hillsides that are covered in meticulously kept coffee groves. Sharp, who runs Jamaica’s answer to Starbucks — Café Blue — leads me to the pulping plant. This state-of-the-art facility processes beans from Clifton Mount and 10 contiguous farms, then sells a choice medium roast blend under the label Coffee Traders. I witness each stage of the process — washing, pulping, fermenting, hulling, separating by grade and drying (the beans are roasted in Kingston).
Belly full after a hearty lunch at nearby Belcour Lodge, I’m on my way to meet Howard Findlater, Chief Operating Officer at Mavis Bank Coffee Factory. MBCF is a coffee processing plant rather than an estate, with monstrous machinery drying, pulping, separating, roasting and packaging. It sources beans from more than 6,000 small local farmers, who bring their crop to 90 depots located around the Blue Mountains. The company’s brand, Jablum, is among the strongest in the market for roast product, as are the green beans it produces, shipped worldwide in emblematic wooden barrels. Findlater gives me a tour of the entire process, from the berries being cleaned all the way to packaging.
A few days later, Coffee Industry Board Quality Assurance Manager Hervin Willis welcomes me at the regulator’s lab where samples of all green beans awaiting export are tested for consistency of color, size and taste. Its strict guidelines and quality control procedures have preserved the Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee brand and made it into one of the country’s strongest trademarks.
A typical cupping is soon underway, with Willis and Quality Assurance Inspector Marsha Valentine sampling roasted beans from the three places I visited.
To begin the cupping, six ounces of 98-degree water are poured directly on nine grams of ground beans in three cups per sample. Next, the aroma is assessed by sniffing each cup closely. Then, the froth is removed and the coffee is slurped to the back of the throat and spit out in what is a sober, formalized process. Faults are sought by assessing consistency between the three cups in terms of acidity, fragrance, body, roast and aftertaste, which are all graded.
All three samples are deemed worthy of the Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee classification, and, as the grading comes to a close, Clifton Mount coffee emerges as the clear favorite, eliciting guttural sounds of enjoyment from Willis, who praises the floral notes resulting from the carefully managed fermentation of the beans (in the end, he would take the leftover beans home). The Mavis Bank medium roast was close behind, while the Twyman Estate beans were noted to have been roasted on the light side, which the experts said prevented full flavor from emerging, but were nonetheless deemed first-class Blue Mountain Coffee.
As I now understand, a Blue Mountain cuppa joe is world-famous for a reason — it assures quality and consistency. Paying that little extra bit is well worth it — I know I’ll be buzzing about it for a while.
For the freshest morning cuppa joe you’ll ever taste, sleep over at Blue Mountain coffee farms.
Shoestring travelers will find basic, comfortable beds at Prince Valley Guesthouse (www.princevalleyguesthouse.com; $30). Heritage Gardens (www.heritagegardensjamaica.com ; $100) of Cold Spring offers a rustic cottage on a small estate rich in history, while Strawberry Hill (www.islandoutpost.com/strawberry_hill; $385-515) is the most luxurious accommodation option in the Blue Mountains, and the only hotel selling its own brand of roasted beans. In Mavis Bank, Forres Park (www.forrespark.com; $75-220) offers a range of amenities for a range of budgets, while Lime Tree Farm (www.limetreefarm.com ; $130 per person) boasts hilltop comfort and the best view of Blue Mountain Peak from its bedroom windows.
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