Blue Mountain Coffee - Jamaica - Dallmayr GRAND CRU CAFÉ

Grand Cru Blue Mountain - Premium coffee from Jamaica

PROFILE

Origin: Jamaica
Type: 100% Coffea Arabica
Quality: Authentic premium quality, washed Coffea Arabica, Grade 1, Wallenford Estate
Roasting: Medium strength
Body: Distinctively voluminous
Acidity: Perfectly balanced
Aroma: Reminiscent of cocoa, with a slightly sweet hint of sandalwood
PREPARATION: Dallmayr GRAND CRU Blue Mountain is ideal for filter and French press coffee. These methods enable its aroma to develop to the full. This premium coffee is also ideal for café crème or caffè lungo in fully automatic coffee machines. Blue Mountain is not recommended for espresso. For best results, please increase the dosage slightly. The beans release their elegant character when brewed with soft water at 95ºC.

The elegant character of the king of coffee

Blue Mountain coffee is one of the rarest and most desired gourmet coffees in the world. It is generally considered by coffee experts to be the ‘king of all coffee’. With its perfect balance of acidity and sweetness, pure character and magnificent full-bodied flavour, GRAND CRU Blue Mountain is best compared to vintage champagne. In the cup, the coffee reveals an extraordinarily delicate cocoa note, intertwined with a slightly sweet hint of sandalwood. It has an excellent, voluptuous body. Its elegant character is finished with a fine, mild acidity.

Pedigree beans from a farm steeped in tradition: the Wallenford Estate

This variety is rather like champagne: only coffee from a specific region may carry the Blue Mountain name. The cultivation region in the high plateaus of Jamaica only stretches across some 6,000 hectares and yields an annual harvest of just 1,000 tonnes. Almost all of the beans come from small plantations. Even the larger farms are still considered small in relation to international standards. In comparison, Brazil – the country of coffee per se – produces over two million tonnes every year. The local coffee commission provides a certificate of authenticity for original Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee that is to be exported. Dallmayr GRAND CRU Blue Mountain comes from one of the oldest and most famous plantations in Jamaica: the Wallenford Estate, which Jamaicans consider to be one of the finest of all coffee plantations. Here, the coffee shrubs flourish in neatly terraced fields with highly fertile soil, shaded by avocado and banana plants and irrigated by the mountain streams.

Coffee cherries shrouded in mist from smuggled goods to the peak of pleasure

The first coffee shrubs were brought – or, more accurately, smuggled – from Martinique to Jamaica by Sir Nicholas Lawes in 1728. It was only with the end of slavery in the British colony that former slaves began to cultivate coffee there in 1838. Today, Blue Mountain is one of the most desired and expensive coffees in the world. At 2,256 metres, Blue Mountain Peak is the highest mountain in Jamaica. It towers above a mountain range stretching over some 50 kilometres, known as the Blue Mountains. The range took its name from the mysterious mists which wrap the mountain peaks in a fascinating blue haze at dawn. The mist-shrouded mountains in the east of Jamaica give the coffee plantation its name. The blue haze, which envelops the Caribbean mountain range like a band every morning, is the main cause of the region’s unique and slightly cooler climate. This causes the coffee cherries to grow at a significantly slower rate. In contrast to the five to six months generally required in other areas, here, the cherries take ten months to ripen. This longer ripening period yields particularly large, firm berries with a wonderfully intense flavour.

Perfectly sized beans packed into wooden barrels for a journey to selected roasting plants

Only beans with a width of at least 6.76 mm and maximum 7.24 mm are processed into the highly acclaimed Grade 1 coffee. Their uniform size permits the perfect roasting process later – for truly first-class quality. All raw coffee that falls outside these measurements is not permitted by the CIB (Coffee Industry Board) to leave Jamaica. Every last load is closely inspected, and then sent to selected roasting plants all over the globe – though not in coffee sacks. Jamaica Blue Mountain is the only raw coffee in the world to be exported in traditional white wooden barrels of 70, 30 or 15 kilograms. These are replicas of the barrels once used to ship flour to Jamaica from Britain. The wood does not alter the taste of the beans, but simply emphasises that the product inside is a luxury good from the Caribbean.

The pearl of the Caribbean, loved by James Bond and Japanese emperors

With a market price of around 100 dollars per kilogram, Blue Mountain is one of the most expensive coffee varieties in the world. Its high price is also due to the fact that Blue Mountain is the official coffee drunk by the Japanese Imperial Family. As a result of this, the ‘pearl of Caribbean’ enjoys a cult status in Japan and other Asian countries. As early as the 1960s, a large part of the harvest, some 90%, would be sold to Japan. In Tokyo’s gourmet restaurants, guests can pay up to 40 euros for a cup of authentic Blue Mountain. First-class passengers on Japan Airlines are served this coffee as standard. Even James Bond orders it in the novels by Ian Fleming – and, of course, in the corresponding films.

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