title_body: Is harvest time important for coffee quality?
upvoted_answer: Yes, it does, but it's much more complex than that :-)
  
  Harvest times vary greatly depending on the latitude, altitude and variety of beans being harvested. There is a very large table here which illustrates the variety of harvest/shipping seasons, as well as the optimum points of both.
  
  In general, December-February is best, but some countries vary anywhere from June to October. Some countries with a larger variety of crops have a lot of different 'Best' points, e.g. Kenya:
  
  
  (The top brown/red line indicates harvest times, Red Bs indicate the optimum harvest times.)