Hunter Valley passion parade

Armed with a vision, a Twitter account and a posse of winemaker buddies, Michael De Iuliis is a man on a mission to give Australia's oldest wine region, the Hunter Valley, an image makeover.

"I think people just kind of forgot [about us]," De Iuliis says. "Within the market, the Hunter is seen as a little bit old-fashioned ... We struggle in the trade getting retailers and sommeliers excited about us."

So De Iuliis got together with five other first-generation winemakers to form the Next Generation Hunter Valley - or possibly the New Generation Hunter Valley winemakers. (The group is currently in the middle of a name change.)

"We're actively getting out there and trying to change people's view of the Hunter - that it's not just about all these companies that have been around for 100 years, but there's a lot of new guys out here who make bloody good booze," De Iuliis says.

Hunter-born and bred, De Iuliis has been in the winemaking business for about a quarter of a century, which, in a region where the first vineyards were established close to 200 years ago, makes De Iuliis Wines a newcomer. Although he was born into an Italian family that he says has "always had a bit of a food and wine obsession", it was fairly late in life that De Iuliis answered the call of the vines.

"I worked for quite a few years in my dad's engineering company and thought, 'we don't drink enough wine in this job'," he says. "So I took myself to school to study winemaking and all the rest of it and graduated from my post-grad course in Adelaide in 1999.

"After that I f---ed up a lot of wine and finally sorted out how to make the good stuff."

"Good stuff" is an understatement. De Iuliis Wines has picked up multiple awards at numerous wine shows, including Hunter Valley, NSW Small Winemakers, Royal Melbourne, and Citibank NSW wine awards.

But awards don't necessarily translate into sales - especially when bottle shops aren't stocking much Hunter Valley wine, De Iuliis says. Which is why the Next Generation group decided to reach out directly to wine drinkers through pop-up wine bars, pop-up dinners and food festival appearances.

"We really want to target the 25- to 40-year-old market and get them to have a great night," De Iuliis says. "It's about trying to remove the stuffiness of wine."

The group's members also have an active presence on Twitter, which De Iuliis says has been a steep learning curve, as well as a fun ride.

"When people ask me 'do you sell any more wine because you're on Twitter?', I go, 'well, I might, but it's more about the conversation ... [and] building a relationship'," he says.

After all, even Australia's best-known wine region has to keep up with what some might think is a frenetic pace of change if it wants to stay relevant.

"We're all under pressure from cheap imports," De Iuliis says. "I think the future for NSW wine is to keep reinventing ourselves, finding out what the customer wants, and meeting those expectations."