Julia Child has become a celebrity again, after her death, with the release of the movie “Julie & Julia.” The movie combines two stories, layering the storyline of Julie, who creates a blog wherein she cooks her way through every recipe in Julia Child’s remarkable “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” in one year, and the storyline of Julia Child’s biography and the effort it took to create her masterpiece.

Julia Child’s story is beautifully portrayed in her autobiography, “My Life in France,” and the background of her life with her husband, Paul, is also fascinating. They first met in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) during World War II when both worked for the Office of Strategic Services. They subsequently moved to Paris, where Julia’s passion for cooking was uncovered. Visits to restaurants, bakers, cheese makers, butchers, fish mongers, candy makers and chocolatiers followed as Child followed her passion and learned as much as she could about food and French cooking.

Julia Child is a culinary icon who was a driving force in creating the culinary and gastronomic culture that exists in the United States today. Her impact can’t be overstated. “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” helped spark a love affair with cooking that continues today. Her television show, “The French Chef,” introduced even more people to classical French techniques and helped make cooking accessible to everyone. The cookbook is enormous, more than 700 pages in the first volume, and took eight years to write and publish. One of the things I learned in her autobiography was that she possessed a remarkable dedication to the craft of cooking and a quest for perfection. Recipes were tested dozens and sometimes hundreds of times, with slight variations of ingredients and technique, so that every step was clearly understood and every recipe could be replicated at home.

The movie was fun to watch, but Julia Child’s autobiography is even more interesting to read for its portrayal of life in Paris, a life spent pursuing a passion for food, and how one woman helped transform and change America’s love for cooking.

Though few records survived, recent linguistic findings suggest the word “cacao” is derived from the word “Kakawa” in Mixe-Zoquean, believed to have been their language.

I like wine. I enjoy learning about how it is made and what the differences are between varietals and geographic regions, and, of course, tasting the finished product. So when I found out about a Colorado wine-country tasting and tour, I jumped at the chance to participate. Colorado is not exactly known as a hotbed of winemaking, but I was shocked to learn that there are almost 80 wineries in the state. I knew of about a half dozen, but nearly 80! On the tour, I tasted dozens of wines and varietals. Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Syrah, Sauvignon Blanc and Riesling were among the types I sampled, all made by small, independent winemakers wholly dedicated to their craft. I visited their facilities, pulling into remote industrial parks divided into small units crammed with crushing equipment, fermenting tanks and bottling lines. Each winemaker poured samples and explained what they were trying to accomplish with each style. The wines ranged from the delicious to the undrinkable, but I had to admire the single-minded dedication of the winemakers, extolling the virtues of their creations and encouraging each of us to sample, and hopefully purchase, their products.

For years, the coffee industry has been trying to replicate the successful model of the wine industry, since there are so many similarities. At the most basic level, both are agricultural crops transformed into beverages, consumed daily and enjoyed by millions worldwide. Different regions of the world yield different-tasting grapes and beans; harvesting and processing are done by hand; and the final taste changes with each batch and is more craft than science. Both the wine and coffee industries encourage education on behalf of consumers to further help them understand the differences among styles and regions. For winemakers, the educational component has been a huge success, with many wine drinkers understanding the differences among wines grown and produced in various parts of the world and made from different grapes. Yet winemakers command a much higher price per glass and bottle than coffee roasters ever could. It would be unthinkable to walk into a café and order a cup of specialty coffee and pay $10 or more for the drink, although the amount of time, effort and labor involved in creating both beverages is comparable.

So how does the coffee roaster instill a sense of more value into the beverage he or she is providing to the consumer? That is the conundrum facing coffee retailers as they seek to boost their sales in the face of increasingly undifferentiated competition. Creative retailers are tackling the issue head on by offering rare coffees prepared with different machines and served by the cup at higher prices. The trend toward super-premium coffee has begun and is slowly gaining acceptance. I hope that consumers embrace these unique drinks and that soon people are talking about their coffee in the same way they talk about their wine.

“Man cannot live on chocolate alone, but woman sure can.”

The oldest known civilization of the Americas (400 – 1500 BC), the Olmecs, were probably the first users of cacao.