Room For Debate discusses coffee's recent price spike. Eugene Anderson looks at the drink's history:

Incidentally, in dramatic contrast to wine, coffee has never been worshiped. Tea is associated with religion in East Asia, but not really worshiped as such. (By contrast, chocolate was an extremely sacred drink, used in the highest and most solemn rituals, in pre-Columbian Mexico and Central America.) 

2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan