With wine awareness in China growing exponentially, will the palates of Chinese glitterati soon be doused in France's finest bouquets?

The International Wine Culture Promotion Association (IWCPA) has announced a donation of 100,000 wine cellars to middle-class Chinese families to promote wine culture in the country.

In Europe, a traditional wine cellar is a vaulted underground space kept cool and away from sunlight. However, no need to worry, the association is not considering bulldozing cellars under Beijing's residential compounds. The IWCPA modern cellars are wooden box-like structures that can be installed anywhere in the house, the association said here Tuesday.

Each cellar is valued at 7980 yuan (US$1000). Recipients will pay 2,980 yuan to become members of the association with the rest gifted by the IWCPA. The 2980-yuan fee can be recovered if recipients purchase enough wine from affiliated retailers.

The 500-million-yuan (US$64 million) donation, sponsored by wineries from 11 countries, targets Chinese wine-lovers, said Stephen Paul Thompson, representative of the Canada-based association in China.

Observers said the marketing gambit would help overseas wineries conquer the domestic market.

The first 20,000 cellars are earmarked for Beijing and Shanghai and recipients are being actively sought, Thompson said.

The happy few will be expected to own their own home (no less than 120 square meters), a private car, to have higher level education, or to be VIPs in banking, aviation or telecommunications industries.

The IWCPA said the criteria for selecting recipients were designed to ensure that they were genuine wine lovers who could afford to be.

China imported 60,600 tons of wine in the first seven months of this year, up 88.8 percent year-on-year.

Even though wine consumption is growing rapidly in China, per capita consumption is only 0.5 liters annually, one-fifteenth of the world average and only accounts for just one percent of the country's annual alcohol consumption.

(Xinhua News Agency November 30, 2006)