A region of northern China that began growing grapes for fine wine just a decade ago has beaten the French wine-producing region of Bordeaux in a blind tasting.

A group of wine experts ranked the bottles from the remote and sparsely populated Ningxia region above those from Bordeaux at the tasting, held in Beijing.

The jury sampled five wines from each region, selecting a cabernet sauvignon from the Grace Vineyard in Ningxia as the top-scoring bottle.

A shopper has broken the record for duty-free purchases at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport by splurging nearly 50,000 euros on six bottles of exclusive wine.

The shopper, who was identified only as “an Asian”, bought a bottle of Romanee Conti 1995, a Chateau Margaux 2003, two bottles of Chateau Lafitte 1982 and two bottles of Petrus 1980, worth a total of 49,905 euros ($66,000).

The airport did not say when the purchases had been made, but noted that high-quality wines “sell better at the end of the year”.

To help mark the 350th anniversary of the Château Rauzan-Ségla vineyard, Karl Lagerfeld has designed the label for the 2009 vintage.

The 2009 vintage wine will feature a special colorful label highlighting the castle found in the Margaux appellation of Bordeaux, France.

Clothing company Banana Republic has teamed up with a California winery to create limited-edition holiday bottles that target the female wine sipper with hand-sketched labels of the little black dress and fancy, sweeping red frocks.

It’s the latest winery to court the female tippler with images of pretty party dresses and promises of chic, sophisticated nights out.

Banana Republic’s party dresses, rendered by the company’s creative director Simon Kneen, will be embellished on Clos du Bois’s most popular wines.

The booming Chinese mainland is now the largest importer of Bordeaux by volume, driving a jump in exports of the French wine, an industry body said.

Exports from the French winegrowing region rose 34 percent in value and 23 percent in volume between July 2010 and June 2011.

The boom was driven in part by iconic great estates, but the bulk came from little chateaux selling wines for less than 4.50 euros.

A 200-year-old vintage from Bordeaux set a new world record for the most valuable bottle of white wine Tuesday when it was sold in Britain for £75,000 ($117,000).

The bottle of 1811 Chateau dYquem was bought by French private collector Christian Vanneque, for his new restaurant in Bali, Indonesia.

The standard-sized, 75 centilitre bottle of wine was sold at London’s Ritz hotel by rare wine specialists The Antique Wine Company.