Global coffee brewer Starbucks announced this week that Starbucks Reserve Jamaica Blue Mountain is now back for a limited time in select Starbucks stores in the United States, Canada and on Starbucks.com.

The hard-to-get bean joins three other reserve brands offered by the international brewer – Nicaragua, Guatemala and Tanzania.

Starbucks referenced the “meticulous standards for growing, harvesting and processing” set by the Coffee Industry Board of Jamaica, “with each bean being inspected and certified to meet rigorous quality standards before it can earn the Jamaica Blue Mountain name”.

Starbucks.com cites the Jamaican source as Amber Estates. Dr Charles Lyn, owner of the collection of six farms, told the

Jamaica Observer that the US-based company buys most of the beans produced by Amber Estates for its annual reserve offering. The reserve sale, he said, usually lasts no longer than a month.

Amber Estates, however, serves other markets year-round including buyers in Europe, Japan, China and Russia. Lyn said that Amber Estates is perhaps the largest coffee-producing enterprise in the Blue Mountain region.

The medical doctor and coffee entrepreneur explained that while the arrangement with Starbucks has been in place for a few years, there was a break in supply last year when beans ready for shipment were destroyed in a flood in the storage facilities of the Coffee Industry Board on Marcus Garvey Drive in Kingston. However, shipments have now resumed.

Starbucks Reserve coffee buyer Ann Traumann noted that while the coffee-growing region on the island of Jamaica is very small compared to its neighbours in Central America, the “growing conditions are unique, and the coffee grown on estates there produce layers of cocoa and citrus unlike anywhere else in the world”.

Blue Mountain Coffee, she said, is both balanced and sweet, with notes of brown sugar, apricot and chocolate.

While levels of consumption have not returned to pre-2008 levels, the global coffee brewer is gathering steam.

Starbucks Corporation, listed on the NASDAQ, reported financial results for its 13-week fiscal first quarter ended January 1, 2017, which included a seven per cent rise in net revenues to US$5.7 billion. Its operating margin expanded in Q1 to a record 19.8 per cent.

The company opened 649 net new stores in the quarter, bringing total stores to 25,734 in 75 countries worldwide.