Read a chronicle by Neal Martin about the 1945 Bordeaux vintage. Apparently those wines are alive and kicking, for the most part.
There’s a lot of old wine from the 1940s, 50s and 60s for sale here in Portugal at very low prices. I’ve never blown any money on it since you’re basically gambling, but the truth is that until the turn of the current century, we were hopelessly far behind international trends, and the sign of a properly made red was that it was tough as nails and built for the long haul. The basics of Peynaud oenology didn’t become established practice here until the late 1990s. As such I have a hunch that many of those old, cooperative wines must be really interesting at this point, and I would point any old wine aficionado in their direction.