I love October. It’s the beginning of the holiday season – the big stuffed turkey, jolly Kris Kringle, champagne toasts and midnight kisses are just around the corner.

But first we have to celebrate my favorite holiday, full of spooky pumpkins, wicked witches and delicious candy: All Hallows Eve.

Many people don’t celebrate Halloween, and it’s sad that they’re not part of the orange and black spirit. At some point in their lives, they must have forgotten how to have fun.

It was early evening before the spooky night, and Mr. Vino and I were preparing for the trick-or-treaters and our gala Halloween costume dinner, making tombstones out of old wooden wine crates. We made my house look like TV’s “The Munsters,” with spider webs, bats and skeletons.

We were listening to the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack and started carving our half dozen pumpkins into traditional jack o’ lanterns, with triangle eyes and giant toothy grins.

I was just finishing my second pumpkin when I heard a witch’s cackle. Bursting through the front door was Talley Ho, the beautiful blonde supermodel and master of wine. She wore a long black wig, a tight black dress showing lots of cleavage and footlong black fingernails. She announced she was Vampira from Ed Wood’s classic bad movie Plan 9 from Outer Space.

She said she always wore her Halloween costume for about a week around the holiday because one day was too short for such a great holiday. I thought about my Dracula costume in my closet and decided to don the cape and fangs after I finished with my messy pumpkins.

“Vampira” brought wine and poured me and Mr. Vino glasses of Mumm Napa Brut with a dash of green food coloring to make the bubbly into a spooky beverage.

With the inspiration of our friend Vampira, soon we were in costume, I as the vampire king and Mr. Vino as a mad scientist with a crazy white wig and doctor’s coat with long black rubber gloves.

We discussed our menu plans for Halloween dinner. Since I was having an open house, we would have an endless bubbling witch’s cauldron of Halloween pasta and blood tomato sauce served with lots of red wine, champagne and tomato juice. Candies, orange pumpkin sugar cookies and devil’s food cake would be served as dessert.

We put on my favorite Halloween film, Universal’s 1931 Dracula starring Bela Lugosi. Although many great actors like Christopher Lee have played the role, Lugosi’s magnificent performance made him an icon. As we heard the theme from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake as the film began, we were ready to watch sinister spiders, giant bats, menacing shadows and the undead, all in beautiful black and white.

Our mad scientist pulled out a bottle of wine and said in a creepy voice, “This wine comes from the wilds of Transylvania.”

I looked and saw it was Vampire Pinot Noir.

“You may laugh, but Romania is a fine viticulture area and Transylvania’s wines have been praised by the great philosopher Plato,” the mad scientist Mr. Vino said. “‘Wine is the blood of the earth,’ according to the Old Testament. So we are all vampires.”

He uttered a macabre laugh and then poured some vino into Vampira and my plastic skull wine cups.

Vampira’s red lips curled up a smile and said: “This has some very nice pinot nuances and some hints of toasty oak. My guess is that this wine is under $10, and I think this wine is as good if not better than a lot of wines coming out of California’s Central Coast in the same price category.”

“There is abundance of great wine that we never see in California,” I said in my fake Bela Lugosi voice. “Eastern European wines have suffered from the lack of modern winemaking technology – from years of being behind the iron curtain – but the vineyards have always been there.”

We tried the Vampire Merlot, which was equally good.

As we got to the part in the film where the bloodthirsty Dracula announces “I never drink – wine” to his victim Renfield, Vampira yelled out to the TV, “We do!” and we all laughed.