Trumpet Tree Coffee Factory - Jamaican Coffee Farmers Association - Grade 1 (Barrel)

Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee is mainly produced by the Wallenford, Mavis Bank, Moy Hall, and Old Tavern Estates. It is consistently the highest-priced coffee in the world (outside of an auction system). A typical Jamaican farmer will pick his or her own "cherry-berry," and drop them off to these estates for processing and payment. For the 15–20 years that we have been buying Jamaican coffee, we were not able to work or communicate with the producers or farmers.

In 2014, we met a young Jamaican coffee farmer named Arthur McGowan, who founded the Jamaican Coffee Farmers Association, a private company invested in processing the coffee of a group of about 250 small producers in Jamaica. The idea was to band together, process their own coffee, and bypass the big estates' processing services. Since then, Arthur has grown his own landholdings to include 85 acres of coffee farm on several parcels, and has build processing and collection facilities in order to control the quality of the green coffee he now sells under the Trumpet Tree brand.

The farms that Arthur owns, which are represented in the Trumpet Tree coffee, are called Flamsted, Good Hope, and Constitution Hill Farms. Trumpet Tree also has buying stations set up in the areas of West Phalia, Penlyne Castle, Clydesdale, and Cinchona. Coffees are purchased here from smallholder farmers and brought to the company's facility on Constitution Hill for processing. The coffees are depulped, demucilaged, and dried mechanically. They are rested for approximately eight weeks before being hulled, and are hand-sorted by a staff of 40 employees.

ID# 16562

Origin: Jamaica

Region: Saint Andrew Parish

Farm: Various farms

Variety: Typica, Blue Mountain, Gesha

Altitude: 823–1200 masl

Proc. Method: Washed