Wine for a gift

[stevebody]

Drink that puppy, my friend, and give a nicer gift. Roundhill is just what IK said: Steady. Not great, sometimes not even okay, but steady. Any '98 should be quite drinkable now but remember that a great many value-priced wines - most, really - are not made to be cellarable, i.e. without the tannins and extraction to provide material that will change and improve the wine as it ripens. Roundhill would have been making that Merlot to Drink Now, not to cellar. All wines don't improve with age, as I found out with a case of Languedoc I bought a year ago that is now so faded it's almost insipid. Drink it now and give your friend a good but affordable Merlot like the Greenwood Springs or the Mason or the Hogue Genesis.