Although Jamaica’s Blue Mountain coffee is grown on only 14,000 acres, it’s famous worldwide. The beans are raised between 3,000 and 5,500 feet where clouds and rains fall almost ten months a year.
By using careful farming techniques, farmers let the cherries grow slowly, soaking up more nutrients and creating delicate flavors. Hand-pickers go up the rows twice a season, choosing only the reddest cherries and dropping the rest.
Each 60-pound box gives only about 10 pounds of clean green beans. This strict sorting keeps flavor nuances smooth, bright, and free of bitterness.
From sixty pounds of fruit comes ten pounds of perfection: flavor so pure, bitterness never appears
In New York’s KIMA cafés chefs now brew tiny cups of this coffee for $28 each. Lines wrap around the shop even at dawn.
Buyers call the drink the “North Star blend” though it’s the same Blue Mountain bean sold for decades. The cafés use silver kettles, glass beakers, and timers so precise fans joke they’re watching a science lab.
Photos of the cups spread on social media, and resale sites list single servings for twice the menu price.
The Jamaican Coffee Board says U.S. shipments rose 140% last year. One Brooklyn importer, Island Reach, has trucks driving crates straight to Manhattan each Friday.
KIMA’s owner says the beans are roasted light, cooled quickly, and never blended, keeping the famed fruit-and-milk taste clear. The slow ripening process in Jamaica’s cloud-covered peaks is what creates this signature flavor profile. Critics point out the farm land is still the same size, so demand can’t rise forever.
Sellers answer that strict quotas protect the crop. Stores meanwhile sell limited tickets, so many teens wait in hope instead of cash.
