Blue Mountains

The Blue Mountain designation is defined by law, not by marketing: coffee may carry the name only if it is grown in specified parishes on the range, broadly between 900 and 1,700 m, and only if the regulator certifies the lot. Coffee from the same farms below that line must be sold as something else.

Almost all of it is Typica — a variety abandoned nearly everywhere else for its low yield and disease susceptibility — grown on very steep ground in small holdings, and shipped in wooden barrels.

Exceptionally smooth and mild: very low acidity, a full creamy body, and gentle nutty, chocolate sweetness with no bitterness at all. It is bought for its balance and absence of harshness rather than for intensity.

Steep, cool, cloud-covered mountain slopes above eastern Jamaica, with high rainfall and a long ripening period.