One of the great names in wine-making, Domaines Barons de Rothschild, said Sunday it plans to develop a vineyard in China to take advantage of growing interest in wine here.

Chateau Lafite has a very high reputation on China and has partnered with CITIC, China’s largest state-owned investment company on 62 acres of vines on a peninsula in eastern China’s Shandong province.

“I am very pleased to develop a vineyard in a country where the interest in fine wines is increasing every year.”

“It is particularly exciting to participate in the creation of an exceptional Chinese ‘grand cru,'” Baron Eric de Rothschild said in the statement.

The Penglai peninsula was chosen as the site after a nationwide search because “it proved to be the most promising area to produce a great wine, in terms of both its climatic and geological conditions,” , according to AFP.

There has been a huge increase in wine consumption in China in the past five years and with its large population and spending power that interest is only expected to increase.

China became one of the global top ten wine consumers in 2005, but there remains a lot of potential for foreign labels as 95 percent of the wines now consumed are Chinese-made.