  We present a QCD analysis of heavy quark mesons focussing on the B -> D*
formfactor at zero recoil, F_D*(1). An advanced treatment of the perturbative
corrections in the Wilsonian approach is presented. We estimate the
higher-order power corrections to the OPE sum rule and describe a refined
analysis of the nonresonant continuum contribution. In the framework of a
model-independent approach, we show that the inelastic contribution in the
phenomenological part of the OPE is related to the mQ-dependence of the
hyperfine splitting and conclude that the former is large, lowering the
prediction for F_D*(1) down to about 0.86. This likewise implies an enhanced
yield of radial and D-wave charm excitations in semileptonic B decays and
alleviates the problem with the inclusive yield of the wide excited states. We
also apply the approach to the expectation values of dimension 7 and 8 local
operators and to a few other issues in the heavy quark expansion.
