Harry,
With all honesty, I should tell you that I do not do wine kits. However, I
can answer you questions in a general way. Please wait until you hear from
those who make wine kits.
1.) At what point should I filter, if I choose to filter the wines?
I generally don't filter my wines until just before I bottle them.
I wait until the wine drops as much sediment as it can before bottling.
If there is too much junk in the wine, them your filter will clog up
very quickly, so I usually let the wine clear as much as it can on its own
(by racking), before making any attempt to filter.

> 2.) When racking, I assume I discard the sediment, even though it has
> lots of wine mixed in there...?
I like to have a reserve top-up for my wines, so I try very hard to
recover as much wine as I can from the sediment. There are many ways to
do this, others talk about putting it into a soda bottle and
running it through the spin cycle on the washing machine. Jack Keller talks
about some different ways on his wine site. I pour the
sediment into a glass container with as little head space as I can and put
it in the fridge. Within 6-10 hours, you'll notice the heavier sediment
falls to the bottom and the wine settles at the top. When the wine at the
top isn't getting any larger in volume, then I draw the wine off into
another container and keep it until the next time I rack.

> 3.) Will filtering reduce the amount of wine loss I'm seeing from
> 2)?.
I don't believe so. You're always going to lose some wine when you're
racking off of lees. You can either make a bit more so you have a little
wine to top-up with, or you can rack to smaller containers each time to
reduce the amount of exposure to air, or you can add a similar wine to top
up with, or you can drop marbles into the carboy to increase the volume to
keep it topped up.

> 4.) For bulk aging, how long should I let the wine sit on the
> sediment? I'm paranoid about oxidation, and don't want to rack every
> month!
My rule of thumb is to rack 2-4 times in a 7 month aging period. It all
depends on the wine. If a wine is dropping a lot of sediment, I will rack
it (but I usually let the wine sit for at least a month). The amount of
sediment a wine drops should lessen with time. Some wines clear up at 3
months and then I won't rack it anymore, some take longer. Hopefully
someone will have some experience with your wine kits, so they can tell you
what works best.

Good-luck,
Darlene
"Harry Colquhoun" > wrote in message
om...
> I have three wine kits on the go right now, all of them in the
> clearing stage or beyond.
>
> First kit is a peach wine kit that has very little sediment on the
> bottom. It has been clearing for the past two weeks.
>
> Second kit is a pinot noir that has already been racked once since
> clearing (lost nearly 1 gallon thanks to all the sediment) and has
> already accumulated another 1" of sediment on the carboy bottom in the
> past two weeks.
>
> Third kit is a riesling that has just started clearing and looks to be
> dropping a considerable bit of sediment as well.
>
> All three of these kits I would like to bulk age for at least 6 months
> prior to bottling.
>
> Questions:
>
> 1.) At what point should I filter, if I choose to filter the wines?
> 2.) When racking, I assume I discard the sediment, even though it has
> lots of wine mixed in there...?
> 3.) Will filtering reduce the amount of wine loss I'm seeing from
> 2)?.
> 4.) For bulk aging, how long should I let the wine sit on the
> sediment? I'm paranoid about oxidation, and don't want to rack every
> month!
>
> This is where the kit instructions really break down, as they seem to
> assume that most people go for the kits so they can get to drinking as
> quick as possible.
>
> Thanks in advance.