Questions on WINE releases and stability

[louis at museresearch.com]

Hi,
  I am a developer for a product which makes heavy use of WINE.  Right
now, we're deciding which newer version of WINE to go to, and I thought
the wine-devel community might have some insight.  I did read the
WineReleaseCriteria entry on the wiki, but still have some questions. 
If anyone could answer some things that I've been wondering about, it
would go a long way towards helping us make an informed decision.  So,
here goes:

- Does the development branch of WINE go through a battery of tests before
it is posted?  What kind of criteria has to be met before a development
release is made available on the main page?

- It's my understanding that the stable branch only has select features
and patches ported over (from the wiki: "..with only minimal changes
merged in").  Would this mean that if I compared a stable release with a
development release from around the same time that the two releases would
have significant differences?  Specifically, I'm wondering about 1.2.3 vs.
1.3.15.

- Is 64-bit support in version 1.2.3 generally usable and stable, or is
the current development release a lot more mature in that respect?

Your expertise would be appreciated!

Louis