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Captain Kirk, your champagne fridge is ready.

Star Trek may have preceded the wine boom, but had there been need for an interstellar cellar on the Starship Enterprise, it might have looked a bit like Veuve Clicquot's Vertical Limit.

Part time capsule, part art object, the gleaming, brushed-metal vault may be the ultimate wine-geek trophy. It even comes factory loaded with all the wine you will need to get the ultimate New Year's party started: 12 super-rare magnums of vintage Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin champagne dating as far back as 1955.

And it could be yours - for a hefty donation to a Canadian medical-research charity.

The two-metre-high unit, unique in Canada and one of just 15 in the world, is being auctioned online this week to benefit the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine, a Toronto-based institution affiliated with the University Health Network that funds cutting-edge research into life-threatening conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and spinal cord injury.

Current bid (at press time): a cool $80,000 (U.S.), which is still well below the record paid for an identical unit at a charity auction in Hong Kong recently: €120,000, or about $185,000 (Canadian).

The Canadian auction, at Veuveclicquotverticallimit.org, closes Sunday at 4 p.m. EST.

Created by Porsche Design Studio, the graphics firm founded by Ferdinand Porsche of sports car fame, it features a dozen vertically interlocking doors, each shaped like a horizontal bottle. Behind them lie perfectly refrigerated 1.5-litre bottles from the best harvests, including the acclaimed 1959 (served at a meeting between Charles de Gaulle and former British prime minister Harold Wilson) and the superb 1969 rosé.

The interior, bathed in the egg-yolk hue of the champagne house's famous label, is kept at a constant 12 C, the brisk ambience of Veuve's underground caves and the optimum for aging champagne. (Sorry - not cold enough for mayo or beer. But once a bottle's consumed, the vacant slot can accommodate just about any other magnum-sized bottle.)

Old champagne may seem a curiosity to people accustomed to buying New Year's bubbly on Dec. 31. But many of the best French cuvées, specifically vintage-dated bottles containing wine from only the best harvests, as opposed to wine blended from several years, are designed to age like top-class reds. Over time, they develop seductive secondary nuances, such as hazelnut, honey and sherry-like notes, making them some of the most coveted wines on Earth.

Veuve, a unit of French luxury house LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, commissioned the 15 fridges to generate buzz for its portfolio of cellar-worthy vintage-dated champagnes, which are less well-known than its ubiquitous, non-vintage Yellow Label brand.

Though most of the fridges are slated to be sold privately (two allocated to the United States were snapped up for $70,000 each), Veuve decided there could be ample publicity spinoff if it donated a few units to the right charities. Enter the McEwen Centre, which the bubbly benefactor had been supporting for years with donations to various fundraising events.

"They came to us with it," said Cheryl McEwen, who, with husband Rob McEwen, was a founding donor of the centre in 2003. "It's a perfect marriage, if you will. It's progressive, it's very modern. And regenerative medicine is very progressive, very modern."

The Canadian auction is open to domestic as well as international bidders, with worldwide shipping included. A formal presentation will be made to the victor at a reception in Toronto on June 10 hosted by Veuve's worldwide president, Cécile Bonnefond. Yes, there will be champagne.