Roberts eventually realized that the wine industry was partly to blame: It hadn't been reaching Generation X - a category he defines as the 17- to 37-year-old set. Marketing studies, in fact, back him up. Gen X-ers are big consumers of every kind of alcoholic beverage except wine. In a short, sobering video put together for the Wine Institute, an educational arm of the wine industry, young barflies were asked about beverage advertising. "They could rattle off everything from the Bud frogs to Mr. Jenkins," Roberts says, "but the only wine commercial anyone could remember was Orson Welles's 'No wine before its time'."

Roberts also realized that the established wine press, with its wine-descriptor pyrotechnics, delivers to the devoted wine collector but fails to attract a younger audience. So in 1996 he decided to create a magazine, which he dubbed Wine X, to fill the void - to connect this lost generation, he wrote, to "wine, food and an intelligent slice of vice." After months of prototypes, Roberts' publication went glossy in June 1997, with jittery graphics and a startling cover (see previous page). A regular column, "Sex, Wine & Rock 'n Roll" matches wine to music (Markham 1995 sauvignon blanc, for instance, with the R&B stomp-and snarl of a group called Make Up). From a photo essay on mountain biking winemakers, to a piece on wine from an African-American perspective, to an innovative rating system (see box, previous page), Wine X boldly goes where no wine magazine has ever gone before. (See THE PANTRY, page 100, for subscription information.) Roberts, who at 36 is quickIy outgrowing his own category, says the magazine's current circulation of 33,000 is ahead of projections, but he adds that it's been tough getting wineries to advertise - their mistake, he believes. "People set their consumption patterns in their twenties," he says. "Those who Drink beer and scotch when they're 27 will still be drinking beer and scotch when they're 57."

Everything, when you think of it, is as cool as it ever was.