Blackstone Sonoma Reserve Merlot

I hardly ever buy random wines, since I go to tastings around town and usually buy my wine from those. But every now and then it's fun to just go out to a place like HEB and get something totally new. So that's what I did, and ended up choosing this Blackstone reserve merlot. Stephen and I visited the Blackstone winery in Napa and LOVED all their reserve black label wines, and since this one was on sale ($10 instead of $18), we thought it was a safe bet! Uh... we were wrong.

This wine was way too strong for one thing. It smelled and tasted very strongly of alcohol, and didn't have too much flavor. In fact, it was almost undrinkable. I ran mine through the aerator about 5 times and it was a LITTLE better, but still just too much for me. Aren't merlots supposed to be soft and fruity? Stephen was convinced this wine was corked, meaning its basically gone bad, but Im unsure about that.

I tried this wine the next day as well and it was again, a LITTLE better. What is up with this wine? Overall I did not like it, and that makes 3 in a row :/.