"A bus driver in Philly -- a bit cloying and kinda funky on the nose, but gets the job done."

Don't get it? If you are over 40, you aren't supposed to, says publisher Darryl Roberts.

Wine X is aimed at all those 20- and 30-somethings referred to as "Generation X."

It relates wine to music, movies and video, the outdoors, pop culture icons and all sorts of other things -- in language and references that leave older wine enthusiasts scratching their heads.

And that's the point, Roberts said.

The wine industry keeps marketing wine to the same group of aging baby boomer wine fans, and watches wine consumption stagnate and decline, he said.

"We don't need to sell to the 50-year-old who's already drinking wine. We need to sell to the 25-year-old who isn't," Roberts said.

People's tastes and consumption patterns for life are set by their late 20s, Roberts contends, and it's a lot harder to get a 40-year-old to start drinking wine than it is a 25-year-old.

The spirits and beer industries market to the younger set, and that's what they tend to drink, Roberts said. But it doesn't have to be that way, he added.

"Their palates are sophisticated -- you don't need to sell white zinfandel to them. They've grown up with rich, flavorful food -- they are more than ready for wine."

The last time wine consumption per capita was growing dramatically was when the baby boomers were young and discovering wine, Roberts said.

"God bless Gallo -- they were putting good wine in big containers, and it was cool to drink chablis and burgundy."

But the industry kept selling wine to the boomers as they aged, rather than re-aiming at the next generation, according to Roberts.

Wine X tries to show young people how wine can fit into the rest of their lifestyle -- music, picnics, backpacking, mountain biking, the beach, dance clubs.

A graduate student at the University of Southern California in the mid-1980s, Roberts "caught the wine bug" during a trip to Napa.

Roberts launched a black-and-white test version of Wine X in 1996. He hoped it would attract investors to expand the concept.

After four issues, the response was big enough that Roberts dumped his own money into a slick, four-color format, and the investors followed.

Since then he's gotten publicity in Business Week, USA Today, the Today Show, and lots of newspapers. But the wine industry remains a hurdle, Roberts said.

The magazine has an audience, with a circulation of 200,000 in the United States and another 100,000 in Australia and New Zealand, Roberts said.

He would like to expand the magazine to Europe and South Africa, but "we are lucky we can pay our bills," he said.

The wine industry, led by older generations, doesn't understand the magazine or the demographic, and isn't buying into it, Roberts said.

The current wine glut may help change those attitudes, Roberts added, by forcing the industry to evaluate the way it advertises and what markets it needs to reach.

If that happens, Roberts may be popping a cork on one of those Philly bus driver champagnes.