My first 3 kits were WineExpert 10L kits; an Australian Shiraz, Sangiovese and a Sauvignon Blanc. I chose them because they could be ready fast. All three kits have been quite the dissapointment. They all taste like grape juice with that ever omnipresent "kit taste" that so many threads are about.
I tend to believe those who attribute that terrible kit taste to the quality of the kit....which equals the amount of juice, which equals what you pay. Here is why.
My 4th and 5th kits were both Cellar Craft, one a 16L Rosso Fortissimo with grape skins, the other their Pinot Noir 16L kit (no skins). Those went into the bottles a month or so ago. I have to say that even at bottling time, those two kits had more flavour, depth, tannin, lasting aftertaste and richness than the three previous kits. Best of all, neither had that horrible kit taste. There is even a discernable difference between the Rosso with the skins and the Pinot Noir.
The Pinot is good, but if you've had a little experience tasting wines, you can tell it is not going to have the "quality" of a good commercial Pinot Noir, even though it has the crispness, the peppery clarity (my own meandering descriptions) and a "real" wine taste that the earlier Wine Expert kits cannot even come close to.
On the other hand, the grape skin Rosso Fortissimo has what I can only describe as "power". Even at bottling time and the test bottle that I opened 2 weeks after, it tastes like a commercial wine. There is no "kit taste", it has the qualities of a low cost wine at this point as it hasn't had a proper time to age and develop depth but it is good.
So...me being a complete newbie to this less than a year ago (though experienced with wine and had several kits made at the neighborhood brew on premises), will support wholeheartedly the more experienced members on here who have been helpful and informative. Many of those in many threads have said you get what you pay for. I have had my own experience and my own kits and have come to the conclusion that I will never make another kit that doesn't have skins. It is absolutely true that the more juice the kit has and the more skins it has, the better the quality of the wine that results.
I don't mind waiting...some unfortunate bottles will be culled early on for "testing"
but the 6 months to a year or more doesn't seem so bad now that I've experienced what the difference actually is. My strategy, keep making wine!!!! In a year or so, my overlap of good, grapeskin kits will provide an ample wine cellar. I currently have a 16L Amarone kit with a 2.6L skin addition in the secondary. At racking time, I was impressed, it already had a better taste than the original 10L low cost, fast kits that I started with do after 6 months...and NO kit taste.
That is my opinion on your original post anyway.