Old Tavern Coffee Estate

About 1.5km southwest of the hamlet of Section and some 1200m above sea level, there’s a small, anonymous cottage that you would surely pass by if you didn’t know that its occupants, Alex and Dorothy Twyman, produce the best of the best of Blue Mountain coffee. Alex immigrated to Jamaica from England in 1958 and started growing coffee a decade later. Dorothy oversees the roasting, meticulously performing quality control by taste. The environmentally conscious Twymans keep their use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers to a bare minimum and compost all by-products before returning them to the soil. Although the Twymans’ coffee is widely acclaimed as the best on the island, until 1997 they weren’t allowed to sell an ounce due to Kafkaesque government regulations. Finally, the Twymans were granted an exclusive license to grow, process, roast and sell a ‘single estate coffee’ under an estate label – the only estate on the island permitted to do so. The Twymans welcome visitors by prior arrangement, except Friday. Visitors can sample the coffee and homemade mead, honey and coffee liqueur.