Jul.11 (Xinhua)--New Zealand winemakers will soon be able to register the geographical origins of their wines in order to protect their reputation in a booming export market.

The government Wednesday announced the start of consultation on the proposed regulations for wine and spirit makers.

"Providing a registration regime for geographical indications will assist the wine industry to protect the reputation of our exported New Zealand wines," Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Paul Goldsmith said in a statement.

"New Zealand wine exports were just under 100 million NZ dollars (71.01 million U.S. dollars) in 1998 and this year those exports broke 1.5 billion NZ dollars (1.06 billion U.S. dollars)."

The proposed regulations set out the procedure for examination and registration of a geographical indication as well as the process for setting up the Register of Geographical Indications.

The register would be administered by the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand.

A geographical indication is a name, usually a regional name, which is used to identify the origin of goods where some quality of the goods is influenced by their geographical origin, such as Champagne and Scotch whisky.