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Her first article--published in the Village Voice--was about the best New York delis in which to buy butter, and it sparked a career-forming epiphany. "I realized this was what I loved, the world of flavor," she says. She educated herself about the industry by writing food and wine articles for women's magazines and making trips to wine-producing regions in Europe. In those days, wine was very much a man's world. MacNeil found herself excluded from tastings and was once left waiting for three hours at an airport by Spanish winemakers who, unaccustomed to the idea of a woman wine writer, overlooked her in the terminal. But dogged perseverance finally got her admitted to the inner circle of wine critics, and in 1991 she signed a contract to write a book on wine for Workman Publishing Co. in New York City. MacNeil ended up spending 10 years on the project, producing the 900-plus-page Wine Bible in 2001. The book, which covers in an unpretentious style all aspects of making, drinking and enjoying wine, has sold 246,000 copies and is in its 10th printing. MacNeil's entire life is defined by wine--she even lives at a vineyard in Napa Valley with her winemaking husband Dennis Fife. And although individual wine consumption is gradually increasing in the U.S.--up 11.2% since 1991--that is not fast enough for MacNeil. "It is as if most of the world didn't know about chocolate," she says. "You want to tell everyone about it." •