Winebuddy Merlot is cheap and cheerful, Bel Vino aussie red is a decent country wine that is similar to a Merlot, could do with a tad of tweaking to give a tad more body, though. I've never tried the expensive kits though, I see kit wine as a great way to get table wine, for anything posher I go with doing fruit wines, you could get together the stuff to do a fruit wine and give him that as a present a sort of home made kit wine