It's our most colorful issue ever! Sixteen pages of the glossy stuff (just like real uptown magazines) and even more in our newsprint (but high quality newsprint!) section. And we've maintained our 90-plus pages at the same time.

The Wine Curmudgeon is just about as happy a camper as you're likely to find him this year, what with a positive court ruling out of Florida on the interstate shipping thing and more and more major media picking up on the free enterprise and constitutional issues involved. What TWC started bitching about in 1977, the Wall Street Journal discovered as an issue in 1997.

Our usual contributor to The Small Vintner column, Patrick Cambell, was too busy crushing grapes to file a story this time, so we bring you a guest column that purports to be the "Ultimate Winery Press Release," by that old master p.r. practitioner, Edwin J. Schwartz.

Whatever you may think, it is not too early to start buying presents for the holidays, and you'll find lots of new gift ideas from Maurice Sullivan in The Book Report, including several books on the technical side that you vintner types will want to acquire. And just for the holiday season, we've made The Best of the Book Report the biggest it has ever been. Lots of recommendations for some of the best wine books in the world.

P.S. McCown reviews a special book by top chefs from San Francisco and the Bay Area, compiled by local members of the concierge corps in The Cookbook Corner.

Charles Sanders is out of the country, so another guest writer, Pearson C. Trent III, tells you everything you need to know as regards choosing and cooking a steak as good as the ones you get at your favorite steak house restaurant.

Fred Dame,The Master Sommelier, continues to call for common sense wine lists. Lists on which real wine drinkers can find wines of which they might actually have heard.

Jim Wallace's Online Report deals with a problem that we have personally encountered...trying to make purchases or send messages via Netscape and not being able to do so. Wallace clears the whole thing up.

Sandi Wechsler just keeps coming up with great sounding hotels and B&Bs in her The Lodgings Report, and this issue is no exception. This time she's taking us to...Michigan?!

Guest contributing for the second consecutive issue is travel writer Alvin T. Guthertz, who specializes in offbeat destinations. This time he's writing about the only cruise ship doing the Caribbean out of Houston, and taking in a couple of ports never before visited by any cruise ship. Follow his lead and you too can go where few tourists have gone before.

The Letters to the Editor section is huge. There is also a W.I.N.O.Newsletter report and more.