Bel Air Lagrave 1989: Bargain vintage drinking

I picked up an end of line bottle of this, the 1989 Bel Air Lagrave, back in April in Vienna.

I paid about 20-30 Euros for it. No more.

For the money it's really excellent value if you like aged Bordeaux wines from the Graves.

I thought it was drinking perfectly. Plenty of spicy black fruit left, (typical Graves in that regard) but with that forest floor / mushroom ageing thing, that adds so much to aged Bordeaux wines.

The Telegraph website here in the UK has it for £34 a bottle.

I'm not sure you can get a 23 year old Bordeaux wine that's drinking so well at a better price, even in the inflated UK market.

If there is, I'd love to hear about it. I just bought a magnum of Cantelys 1999 for about £45. That might qualify but it's so much younger the comparison wouldn't be fair I suppose. I will report back on the Cantelys in due course.

It's hard to keep up with who is still in, or out of, the Cru Bourgeois classification these days/each year. But this is a little gem that deserves to be there if the other years are anything like this one.