Jamaica

The island's highest coffee slopes carry a legally defined designation once famously shipped abroad in wooden barrels rather than jute sacks.

Jamaica is a small, high-prestige origin: FAO data put its 2013 output at about 0.1% of world production, but its flagship, Jamaica Blue Mountain, carries unusually strong legal protection. Coffee production began after 1728, when Governor Sir Nicholas Lawes introduced the crop near Castleton. After 1791 the Haitian Revolution drove French planters out of Saint-Domingue, and some of these experienced growers fled to Jamaica with their expertise. Production has swung widely over the last half-century (from a low of 958 tonnes in 1979 to a peak of 15,117 tonnes in 2007, per FAO figures), and the industry is overseen by the Jamaica Agricultural Commodities Regulatory Authority (JACRA), formerly the Coffee Industry Board. The 2018 JACRA regulations define Jamaica Blue Mountain as coffee grown inside a boundary drawn through named places, and name no parish, though Wikipedia and WIPO describe the area as the parishes of Saint Andrew, Saint Thomas, Portland and Saint Mary. The same regulations define Jamaica High Mountain Supreme as the premium grades grown outside that boundary. Wikipedia gives Jamaica High Mountain as coffee grown at roughly 460-910 m and Jamaica Supreme (also called Low Mountain) as coffee grown below roughly 460 m. These are grades rather than places, so they are recorded here as trade names, not regions. Wikipedia lists the island's coffee elevations as 15-1,603 m, while Blue Mountain sources reach about 1,800 m, so the range here takes the wider top. Typica makes up about 70% of the island's yield, with hybrids such as caturra and geisha also grown. Jamaica Blue Mountain has been marketed in wooden barrels rather than bags, and the first three barrels were shipped to Japan in 1953. That began a trade relationship that at its peak sent nearly all of the premium crop to Japan.

History

Coffee production began in Jamaica after 1728, when Governor Sir Nicholas Lawes introduced the crop near Castleton. The plant is traditionally traced to one of three sent to Martinique by King Louis XV of France. After 1791 the Haitian Revolution drove French planters out of Saint-Domingue, and some fled to Jamaica with coffee-growing expertise. The industry has since been shaped by storms (notably Hurricane Ivan in 2004, which sharply cut output), swings in Japanese demand (Japanese purchases fell by about half after the 2008 recession), and a regulatory lineage running from the Coffee Industry Board to today's JACRA, which oversees certification of the Blue Mountain designation. The first three barrels of Blue Mountain coffee went to Japan in 1953, and at its peak Japan bought nearly all of the premium crop.