Nov. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Fifty cases of 1982 Chateau Mouton Rothschild, a Bordeaux that wine critic Robert M. Parker Jr. has called ``perfect,'' sold at auction for $1.05 million, two-and-a- half times what the same cases fetched almost a decade ago.

The 50 cases of 1982 Mouton, with a dozen bottles each, had a presale estimate of $600,000 to $1.2 million. The 600 bottles were the centerpiece of the Nov. 18 New York auction of the equivalent of about 14,000 bottles, including rare magnums and double magnums, from the collection of 75-year-old home-furnishings entrepreneur and restaurateur Park B. Smith.

Smith paid $420,500 for the 50 cases at a 1997 Zachys- Christie's auction. They have since sat untouched in a wine cellar at his weekend home in Lakeville, Connecticut. While Smith had planned to drink the Bordeaux with family and friends, he decided to sell more than a third of his collection, including the 1982 Mouton, to raise money for his alma mater, the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.

``It's 24 years old and to have it in pristine condition is unique, and that merited an increase in value,'' said Jamie Ritchie, senior vice president of Sotheby's U.S. wine department. Single cases of the 1982 Mouton have sold at auction this year for $9,500 to $13,000, Ritchie said, compared with the about $21,000 per case paid on Nov. 18.

Record Price

The $1.05 million sale price for the 1982 Mouton, which sold as a single lot to an anonymous European phone bidder, includes a 19.5 percent buyer's premium that goes to Sotheby's and Aulden Cellars, both based in New York, which jointly conducted the auction. The price was a record for a single lot at a commercial wine auction, Ritchie said.

The auction raised $5.33 million with buyer's premium. The presale estimate, without buyer's premium, was $3.1 million to $4.8 million. Smith has previously donated more than $20 million to the College of the Holy Cross. The 1982 Mouton represented about 20 percent of the money raised in the sale.

Wine critic Parker in 2000 wrote that he has ``always felt the 1982 Mouton was perfect.'' The wine ``exhibits huge tannin, unreal levels of glycerin and concentration, and spectacular sweetness and opulence. Nevertheless, it demands another decade of cellaring, and should age effortlessly for another seven or eight decades.''

`Like My Children'

Smith, the founder of textile-and-fabric maker Park B. Smith Inc. and a partner in the Manhattan restaurant Veritas, wasn't at the auction. In a telephone interview last week, he said he wouldn't attend because the wines are ``like my children. I don't want to see my children going to new homes.''

Aside from the previous sale of the same 50 cases of 1982 Mouton, which had just one owner before Smith and have been in temperature- and humidity-controlled storage since their 1985 release, there are few precedents for such an auction.

In September, at a Christie's sale in Los Angeles, a 12- bottle case of 1945 Chateau Mouton Rothschild sold for $290,000, setting a world auction record for a single case of wine. The record was immediately broken at the same auction, when a six- magnum case of the same wine sold for $345,000.

To contact the reporter on this story: Daniel Taub in Los Angeles at dtaub@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 20, 2006 06:21 EST