All wine imported from France has been taken off the shelves of some large department stores in Beijing, while others have removed some of it, the newspaper said.

In the southern province of Guangdong and southwestern province of Sichuan, the health inspection bureau has banned sales of French wine, it said.

The State Exit-Entry Inspection and Quarantine Bureau has issued a circular demanding all French wine sold in China's market carry a label specifying its origin, it said.

Wine produced in the four French provinces of Vaucluse, Ardeche, Drome and Gard will be held unless the certificate of origin specifies no cow blood was used in the purification of the wine, the newspaper quoted the circular as saying.

China has frozen nationwide sales of French wine citing concerns that blood infectedwith mad cow disease might have been used to process it, state media have said.

Before the practice was barred by the European Union in 1997, some vintners used a byproduct of blood known as albemims to filter out impurities and sediments.

France has outlawed the use of blood in wine-making and introduced new filtering technology, but last month French authorities caught a handful of wineries still using cow's blood, a French trade official has said.

"All of that wine has been seized," he said. "It's not possible for any of it to be exported."

"We've given the Chinese details on what happened," he said, adding the two sides had been in talks for three weeks and France had offered to include certificates with wine exports to China.

France produced 5.43 billion litres of wine last year, of which 5-8 million litres were exported to China, according to the French embassy.

Chinese television said last week quarantine officials were worried about exposure to bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cowdisease, but made no mention whether the disease had turned up in any French wine.

British officials have said there is a possible link between mad cow disease and a fatal brain disorder in humans known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.

The television report said sales would resume in China only if the French government issued certificates identifying each wine's place of origin.

Bottles from the four provinces would be banned unless accompanied with proof that no blood products had been used.