Private wine cellars 'to become more popular' in China

This year will see an increase in the number of private wine cellars being built in China.

According to Li Peixu, from a wine counselling company based in Hangzhou, the capital of the Zhejiang province, wealthy Chinese people are turning to wine as an investment or hobby more than ever before.

"We have helped one of our clients in Yiwu turn a 90-square-meter underground car park into a fully-equipped cellar with temperature and humidity controls. It cost more than a million yuan [£102,000] just for decoration," he told the China Daily.

However, he stressed that his customers do care about the taste and history of wine and that it is not all about having a status symbol.

Businessman Wang Hai, meanwhile, told the news provider that wine investment is a huge trend in his small town of Yiwu, where there are around 50 people who collect top rated wine.

He alone has a million-yuan wine cellar, a converted garage, which houses his prized wine, a bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1965, valued at 40,000-50,000 yuan.

This year could see continued positive trading on the Shanghai Wine Exchange, which launched last July. It has seen daily turnover of around ten million yuan and by the end of the year, China Daily stated that there will be more than 590,000 people in China with disposable assets of at least ten million yuan.

It estimated that if 0.5 per cent of this goes into wine investment, the market will reach 90 billion yuan.

Chateau Lafite now accounts for up to 30 per cent of trade on the online Shanghai Wine Exchange, although this has fallen as Chinese traders have become more interested in diversifying their collections to include other fine wines from different regions including Burgundy, as well as second growths.