History of Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee, from 1728 to JACRA

Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee has a long history but a fairly recent legal identity. Coffee was introduced to Jamaica in the 1720s, usually dated to 1728, while the controls that turned "Blue Mountain" into a certified, protected name were built between the 1940s and the 2018 JACRA regulations.

When did coffee arrive in Jamaica?

The standard date is 1728, and the person usually credited is Sir Nicholas Lawes, who experimented with crops on his Temple Hall estate. The details are less tidy than the legend. According to Wikipedia's biography, Lawes was governor of Jamaica from 1718 to 1722, so by 1728 he was a former governor, and some sources date coffee's introduction to 1721 instead. Wikipedia's article on Blue Mountain coffee gives 1728 and notes the plants were of the Typica variety, a line whose ancestry runs back to Ethiopia via Yemen; see Typica and Yemeni coffee.

The wider story of how coffee reached the Caribbean is covered in our short history of coffee. Jamaica and its neighbors share that Typica ancestry; as the French colony of Saint-Domingue, Haiti supplied around 60% of the coffee consumed in Europe by the 1780s.

How did quality control begin?

Through a crisis in the export trade. WIPO's case study records that in 1944, under British rule, Jamaica set up a Central Coffee Clearing House to which all export coffee had to be delivered for cleaning and grading. In 1950 the Coffee Industry Board was established to maintain and standardize the quality of exported coffee, under the Coffee Industry Regulation Act of 1948.

The Coffee Industry Regulations, 1953, made by the board on March 12, 1953, gave Blue Mountain its first detailed legal definition: coffee grown in a described Blue Mountain area and processed at one of the coffee works listed in a schedule. The same regulations defined a "blue mountain blend" as at least 20% Blue Mountain coffee by weight, and barred anyone without the board's written authority from selling or exporting other coffee under a name containing "Blue Mountain".

How did the processing tradition form?

The handling that buyers associate with Blue Mountain coffee grew up alongside these controls. WIPO's case study, drawing on the Coffee Industry Board's own account, describes reapers selecting ripe red cherries, wet coffee reaching a government-authorized facility within 24 hours of pulping, sun drying, and a rest of at least eight weeks in wooden silos or jute sacks before hulling, polishing and hand sorting. The board described that final hand sorting as the lynchpin of the quality presentation of Jamaican coffee. Tying the Blue Mountain definition to licensed coffee works, as the 1953 regulations did, was a way of keeping that chain under supervision.

How did Japan become the main market?

In March 1953, Mavis Bank Coffee Factory, founded in 1923 by Victor and Edna Munn, sent three barrels of green coffee to Tokyo under the direction of Keble Munn, Jamaica's first certified international cup tester, according to a 2023 Jamaica Observer history of the factory. It is generally described as the first direct shipment of Jamaican coffee to Japan.

The relationship grew from there. The Jamaica Observer reported that the largest shipment of Blue Mountain coffee left Kingston for Japan on January 9, 1967, and Japan now marks January 9 as Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee Day, first observed in 2019. Our page on Blue Mountain coffee and Japan covers that history.

How did the name become an international mark?

As the coffee's reputation rose, so did imitation. The Coffee Industry Board registered the name abroad through its subsidiary Coffee Marks Limited: WIPO lists a United States certification mark (No. 1,414,598), a European Union trademark (No. 002093060) and a United Kingdom certification trademark (No. 1222993). Jamaica passed its Protection of Geographical Indications Act in 2004, and in 2011 the Jamaica Intellectual Property Office said it was working toward geographical indication protection for Blue Mountain coffee, the Jamaica Information Service reported.

What has hurt the industry?

• Pests. The coffee berry borer was detected in Jamaica in 1978 and had spread across the coffee-growing region by the early 1980s, according to a 2023 study in Insects.
• Disease and storms. After Hurricane Sandy in 2012, coffee leaf rust flared up; the Jamaica Gleaner, citing IICA, put 2012–13 losses at about US$5 million, around a quarter of industry earnings.
• Counterfeits. The Coffee Industry Board estimated about US$4 million in lost export earnings to counterfeit coffee over 2013–14, Daily Coffee News reported.

Why was JACRA created?

A 2009 ministry study questioned whether Jamaica still needed separate boards for each commodity. In September 2016 the House of Representatives passed a bill creating the Jamaica Agricultural Commodities Regulatory Authority, which absorbed the Coffee Industry Board along with the cocoa board, the coconut board's regulatory functions and the spice export division, the Jamaica Information Service reported. JACRA's regulations, made in January 2018 and published in the Gazette on March 2, 2018, redefined Blue Mountain coffee simply as coffee grown in the Blue Mountain area, raised the blend minimum from 20% to 30%, and kept the ban on unauthorized use of the name.

Production has recovered in recent years: the Jamaica Coffee Exporters Association reported Blue Mountain output rising from about 240,000 boxes in 2021/22 to 285,000 in 2022/23, though it said rain during the 2023/24 harvest cost an estimated 50,000 boxes against JACRA's 300,000-box target. Nearly three centuries after the first plants arrived, weather, pests and imitation remain the same three pressures the industry has always faced. For how the system works today, read JACRA certification, and for the whole origin, our Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee overview.