It's WineRave night at Chicago's trendy nightclub Drink. Rock bands belt out tunes under a heart-shaped neon light. Wrapped in a cigar-smoke haze, 600 trendsetters guzzle premium cabernets and chomp on high-priced pizza A nonprofit AIDS group hands out condoms.

"We’re knocking wine off its pedestal," says Jeffrey Bundschu, 29, cofounder of Wine Brats, the group that organized this unorthodox tasting. The Brats want to persuade Gen-Xers to drink more wine. What better way than to associate with high-energy parties rather than with sedate sipping?

U.S. consumption has slipped almost 10% since 1982. People in their 20s and 30s account for only a third of total wine consumption in the U.S. and quaff less than their parents did at the same age. “Fifteen or twenty years from now, when our current consumer base has aged, we will be left with a big hole in our demographics,” worries Gallo of Sonoma Winery's marketing director, Patrick Dodd.

The Wine Brats are a nonprofit group, but they heavy interest in making wine hip. All come wine families: Bundschu from Gundlach-Bundschu Winery; Jonathan Sebastiani, 27, from Viansa Winery; and Michael Sangiacomo, 29, from Sangiacomo Vineyard. All are being groomed to take over their family-owned California wine businesses.

When he and his fellow Brats were in college, says Bundschu, “Wine wasn't cool; it didn’t have the pizzazz of a martini or a microbrew.” He thinks this is partly the industry's fault. Its advertising tends to feature romantic chateaus surrounded by rolling vineyards. That doesn't speak to today's youngsters. Wine Brats’ stunts do. For example, they run seminars on how to pair wines with Doritos, popcorn, chips and salsa while television sets play reruns of I Love Lucy and Happy Days.

More than 50 wine producers -- including Gallo, Kendall-Jackson Winery, Wente Vineyards and Beringer Vineyards -- contribute to the Brats $300,000 annual budget. The trio recently signed a book- deal with St. Martin's Press for a Wine Brats guide to living with wine.

Inspired by Wine Brats, Wine X, a magazine targeting twenty-somethings, hit the newsstands last summer. It pokes fun at stuffy wine etiquette and jargon. and runs stories on toothpaste tastings hangovers. An excerpt: “Elizabeth Vineyards, 1995 Zinfandel -- The only way to enjoy this wine to its fullest potential is to bark at the moon and run naked through an old vines vineyard." Or: Morgan 1995 Zinfandel -- the Kate Moss of zins: lean, spicy and in desperate need of food."

The Brats seem to be having some impact on the way the big guys market wine. Sebastiani Vineyards ran a racy TV spot last December in which a harried housewife comes home to find her husband waiting for her on the staircase wearing nothing but a big red bow over his midsection and holding a glass of wine on a platter.

Won't all this Gen-X pandering turn off the steady customers? The wine industry is taking no chances. In pitches to restaurant owners and consumers, the three Brats stay with white tablecloth tastings and play up the family heritage.