St Thomas: Blue Mountain Coffee in the East

St Thomas is one of the three parishes where Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee is legally grown, with its coffee country concentrated in the mountainous west, around Hagley Gap and the ridge east of Mavis Bank. The parish is better known for the 1865 Morant Bay uprising, but its highland communities have farmed coffee for generations.

Where does Blue Mountain coffee grow in St Thomas?

JACRA names St Thomas, alongside St Andrew and Portland, as one of the parishes that make up the legally defined Blue Mountain coffee area. Within the parish, that coffee country sits inland and to the west, in the high country around Hagley Gap and Penlyne, described on their own page, and in the ridges east of Mavis Bank that mark the boundary with St Andrew. The Jamaica Information Service's profile of St Thomas puts the parish's total area at 742.2 square kilometers, bordered by St Andrew to the west, Portland to the north and the Caribbean Sea to the south, with terrain that climbs from coastal flats to peaks in the Blue Mountains. The legal boundary that defines the wider Blue Mountain coffee area also runs through St Thomas: it passes near Cedar Grove and along the western slope of the John Crow Mountain before turning back toward the farming districts further west, a route described in full on the Blue Mountain growing region.

Hagley Gap and the country east of Mavis Bank

Hagley Gap, on the St Thomas side of the range, is described by Wikipedia as a farming village whose economy centers on coffee, and it sits close to the trailhead for Blue Mountain Peak; a fuller account is on Hagley Gap and Penlyne. Further west, the properties of RSW Estates, Resource, Sherwood Forest and Whitfield Hall, sit across the Yallahs River from Mavis Bank, on ground that Sherwood Forest's own website places in St Thomas; see Whitfield Hall. Mavis Bank Coffee Factory itself, in neighboring St Andrew, draws on this eastern country too: the Jamaica Observer reported in 2023 that the factory serves about 4,000 farmers across Portland, St Thomas and St Andrew, which shows how closely the parishes' coffee farming is tied together despite the parish line running between them.

Coffee works and cooperatives in St Thomas

St Thomas has its own processing history distinct from Mavis Bank. A Jamaica Information Service report described the Blue Mountain Coffee Cooperative, based in Cedar Valley, St Thomas, whose annual meeting was held that year at the Moy Hall Coffee Factory. The report said the cooperative's output had grown from 8,000 boxes in 1998 to 44,000, and that it had built storage for 60,000 boxes. Moy Hall's name also attaches to a separate, more recent operation: Moy Hall Estate Coffee, made in St Thomas by Nakashka Coffee Company under Courtney and Paula Fletcher, who began farming coffee there in 1994. The Gleaner reported in 2024 that the company has long exported about 90% of its crop.

These two operations illustrate a broader pattern in St Thomas: coffee here is processed both through cooperative structures built up over decades, like the Blue Mountain Coffee Cooperative, and through smaller family businesses that have grown their own export markets, like Nakashka. Neither approach dominates the parish, and both sit alongside the much larger Mavis Bank operation just across the parish line, which many St Thomas smallholders also sell to.

A parish shaped by mountains and history

St Thomas stretches from Blue Mountain peaks down to the coast at Morant Bay, its capital. The Jamaica Information Service's parish profile records human settlement there from around 650 CE and notes the parish's central role in Jamaican history: the 1865 Morant Bay uprising, led in part by Paul Bogle, a National Hero today, began in St Thomas and reshaped Jamaica's colonial government. Coffee farming in the parish's highlands developed alongside this longer history, on ground far removed from the coastal towns most associated with 1865.

Recent damage and recovery

St Thomas's coffee farmers have faced setbacks in recent years. A Jamaica Information Service report on bush fires named Black Spur, Mahogany Vale, Hagley Gap and Epping Farm as St Thomas communities where Blue Mountain coffee, bananas and other crops were damaged, and quoted the agriculture minister of the time on the importance of protecting the Blue Mountain brand because of its global demand. More recently, a 2026 Jamaica Information Service report described a $132 million rehabilitation program following Hurricane Melissa, covering coffee farmers in St Thomas alongside Portland and St Andrew, part of a wider recovery that saw the industry produce 145,000 boxes of Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee in 2025, ahead of an earlier projection of 127,000 boxes.