The Jamaican coffee industry is about to begin a crack-down on counterfeiting and ‘passing-off’ of inferior coffees being sold as genuine Blue Mountain.

There has long been a trade in the ‘counterfeiting’ of certain coffees – not just Jamaica Blue Mountain, but Monsooned Malabar and various Ethiopian coffees have been the subject of ‘passing-off’, in which lesser coffees are packaged and sold as the real thing.

Now, the director general of the Jamaican Coffee Industry Board, Chris Gentles, has said that September will see the beginning of a campaign against ‘falsely-marked’ coffees.

His work will start inside his island, first concentrating on packaged coffee offered to tourists – the vast majority of the coffee goes abroad, and yet he has been reported as saying that fraudulent claims of supposedly 100 per cent Blue Mountain coffee in tourist shops are ‘rampant’.

Meanwhile, the question of certification of genuine JBM has cropped up again with the imminent launch of Café du Monde’s new Chez Toi project, which seeks to open up a domestic market for cafetiere-sized portions of various great coffees.

When selling genuine Jamaica Blue Mountain, says Café du Monde managing director David Latchem, it is well worth while stressing the certification, the reputation, showing the certificate of authenticity, and then marketing at a high price.

High-class hotels and café bars can do so effectively, he says: “Just as there is a resurgence In quality teas in hotels, I expect a resurgence in quality coffee, too.

“If you’re buying in coffee for a hotel, why not sell it by saying that your cafetiere coffee is £2.95, but that the JBM, the finest coffee in the world, is £5.95 – sell the certificate of authenticity!  If people are paying a fiver for a brandy or a malt whisky, this is not going to put them off.”

N.B. the coffee pictured here is accredited.

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