What was this? The proper wine lovers fretted as the elevator lurched upward.

Had the upstart Generation X infiltrated their tasting, one of the last vestiges of upstanding, arcane - oh, let's just say it - wine snobbery?

Not to worry.

The Gen-Xers dashing for the exits were local restaurant employees like Memphis manager Sandra Spalding and her bar manager, Tera Brewer, both 24. For food and beverage industry employees, tasting and selling wine is a big part of their job, and they enjoy it.

But now it was 6 p.m., the trade portion of the Zinfandel tasting was over, and the wine world was settling back onto its musty, fusty axis.

Gray sedans disgorged packs of middle-agers with round middles and square notebooks, ready to record bouquet, taste and appearance.

Comforting for the wine gentry.

Too bad for the wine industry.

U.S. wine consumption has slipped almost 20 percent since 1985, when it peaked at 2.43 gallons per person, according to the Wine Institute, a trade group.

People in their 20s - the heart of so-called Generation X - account for just 4 percent of all wine volume. Twenty-somethings drink less wine than any other type of alcoholic beverage.

"Something needs to be done," said Patrick Dodd, marketing director for Gallo of Sonoma. "Young adults have traditionally not been heavy consumers of table wine, but that trend is going in the wrong direction.

"We see an even greater urgency to figure out what it is about young adults and wine and what we can do to make it a part of their lives. "

At least a portion of the industry is waking up, with a new, $1.3 million ad campaign by the Wine Market Council ("Wine: What are you saving it for? ")

The industry has also given $ 1 million to a nationwide social/marketing effort called the Wine Brats, an irreverent bunch that tries to create wine fun.

WINE IN THE CALVIN KLEIN DEPARTMENT

The Brats sponsor local chapters in most large cities and encourage young people to taste wine in unconventional settings.

There have been "wine raves" in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles and, last week, a tasting in the Calvin Klein department at the San Francisco Macy's.

While young people generally embrace the fresh approach of the Wine Brats, the events also highlight the difficulty of marketing to a group that includes the honestly curious, affluent yuppies already collecting first-growth Bordeaux, and those who see a cheap chance to get drunk.

The alternative newspaper San Francisco Weekly skewered the Brats in February under the headline "They're YOUNG! They're RICH!

They'll drink ANYTHING! "

The article described the crowd at a San Francisco Brats event as cell-phone-carrying yuppies distinguished from old-style wine snobs mostly by their "Animal House"-style drinking habits.

The article was perhaps closer to the truth when it called the Brats a "savvy marketing gimmick disguised as a wine youth movement. "

Either way, Wine Brats Executive Director Joel Quigley is still smarting over the article.

"They portrayed it as a big frat party, all white and rich," Quigley said.

"There are 25-year-old wine snobs, sure. But we are a completely open organization. What are we gonna do? We're not gonna kick them out. We like that mix of people. "

Quigley, who at 37 calls himself the Brats "grampa," spouts off demographics like a mantra:

"This is a group of nearly 80 million people. In 2001, their spending will be $ 1.8 trillion. These people are already into single malts, fine cigars. They spend 25 percent of their disposable income dining out _ more than any generation before.

"This group is absolutely the future. Why wouldn't you want to put a glass in these people's hands? They are ready for wine right now. "

SNUBS AT WINE TASTINGS

Well, some are and some aren't.

"To be truthful, most young people drink to get drunk," said Richeal Martinez, 22, an engineering administrator from Huntington Beach.

"Wine is an acquired taste," Martinez said. "It doesn't taste as good as those fruity drinks. It's something you have to learn about. "

Martinez learned about wine during college, working behind the tasting bar at Dunnewood Winery in Mendocino. Since moving back to Southern California, Martinez said, she has been sneered at by wine waiters and snubbed by the older crowd at local wine tastings.

"The wine industry has to try to make it more appealing to the younger crowd," Martinez said. "They need to advertise it more.

They need to make it fun somehow. "

Leading that charge is Darryl M. Roberts, 36, a former TV producer who publishes Wine X Magazine (Motto: "Wine, Food and an Intelligent Slice of Vice. ")

Roberts lampoons the fruit-salad descriptions and 100-point rating scale used by industry bible Wine Spectator with his magazine's own "X-rated scale. " One X means recommended ("gets it done") two X's is highly recommended, and three X's means "exceptionally cool. "

Some critics say Roberts gets carried away with racy descriptions that tell very little and can border on the insulting.

He compares a Belvedere Chardonnay to TV's Dharma: "spicy, sexy and a bit out there. " A Columbia Winery Syrah is like "Daisy Fuentes: Well-built, nice body, good-looking from the back but a teeny bit shallow. "

"They are trying very hard to make wine sexy, and to make it accessible to younger drinkers," said Linda Lai, 28, of Fullerton, who is organizing an Orange County chapter of Wine Brats.

Savvy local restaurants like Memphis in Costa Mesa and Fleming's Prime Steak House in Newport Beach's Fashion Island are already catering to neophyte wine drinkers with 20-something sommeliers, free tastes and wines by the glass.

According to Wine X's Roberts, that's what's the entire industry better do if it doesn't want to write off a generation.

"If a young person walks into a tasting room or a restaurant, and these guys look down their nose at them, those people will never come back," he said.