2000 Château Haut-Bages Libéral

I'm back again and this time it's not a pride. This will be my first experience with an old bordeaux, so I'm going in pretty blind. Upon opening, the cork was pretty saturated and broke off into little pieces but nothing a little straining couldn't fix. I don't decant because I'm scared of wines fading, on the nose it was very reserved mostly a little bit of dark fruit, I let it sit for a while on glass while it got up to temperature. Color seemed like the usual for a 25 year old wine, I was pretty nervous because the fill level was below compared to another bottle that I have.

Upon smelling again I can notice a little bit cherry, blackberry and pencil shavings ✏️. On taste it had pretty integrated tannins, and a smooth finish but idk if it's me or the wine since I don't have any experience with bordeaux blends from france much less a 25 year old, but I find it tastes watery maybe some fruit notes and a little bit a cedar. I don't like this statement but "It goes down easy" barely any tannins or rough and pronounced flavors that I got from other wines from the 2000. Keep in mind I mostly keep to napa valley wines, and compared to those this only has 12.5% alcohol idk if that matters.

I don't hate it,it seems like a great sipping wine without food. It might've been this bottle, I have another one for later that I'll give another chance later with some food. All in all not a bad wine but also not a 10/10 just a little disappointed since I've only heard good things from bordeaux, I doubt it's past prime, but of course I am comparing it to a 2000 pride cab which will obviously be more fruit foward but this bordeaux is 80% Cabernet Sauvignon and 20% Merlot so I expected to be pretty similar. Later on I'll probably give some other bordeaux a try to compare and see, I also noticed the bottle had barely any sediment. Maybe a dumb phase? Idk.

Thank you for reading, and do y'all have any recommendations for any other bordeaux I can try later on? In a couple of weeks I'll be opening a 1997 Domaine Huet Vouvray Clos du Bourg Moelleux Premiere Trie so keep an eye out for that. This will be all for now, hope y'all enjoyed it.