If you are thinking of picking up where your friend left of and taking up
his hobby, that is one thing. If you are just trying to salvage what you
can of this 5 gal. batch of wine that he left you, that is another.

First. I the wine evidently has been bulk aged for many years. It should
have been racked several times during that time and should not have had any
significant sediment. There is nothing wrong with bulk aging that long but
good practice would not have wine sitting on sediment that long. Maybe your
friend just could not take care of this wine properly during this time.

You did say it was very excellent wine. Did you taste it or are you taking
someone else's word for this? If you liked it then it was good wine. My
experience has been that you can leave the sediment in the bottles and
decant the wine off the sediment as suggested above but it is not going to
keep well and will eventually go bad. In general, sediment is not good for
wine. If you are planning to keep it for a long time then I would suggest
you open the bottles, carefully pour them back into 4, one gallon jugs (not
the 5 gallon carboy). Fill them very full, crush a campden tablet and add
to each and cork tightly with a rubber bung or use an airlock if you have
one. Let these clear for a month or two. It should not take more time than
that. Then rack the clear wine off the top of each and bottle. You can
then pour all the remaining sediment and wine into one container and let it
clear and tray to salvage a bit more wine from the remainder but plane to
drink that wine right away as it will have had a lot of air contact.

After bottling these do not plan to drink any of them for at least one or
two months as they will all have a bad case of bottle shock.

Good luck with your friends wine. I am sure it is something that you want
to save and drink on occasion in remembrance of him.

Oh, you asked about sweetening the wine. No this is not cheating. At this
point you are acting in your friends stead as a home winemaker. You are not
cheating, you are crafting a wine. That means you are doing what is
necessary to make it taste line what you and your loved ones like. You may
add grape concentrate or honey or sugar or what ever you like to it. Have a
party with your friend's friends and experiment with different mixtures to
see what people like. Open some bottles and let people add different
amounts of melted frozen Welch's concentrate and/or honey and/or sugar and
see what people like. It can be fun and a fun remembrance of your friend.
Heck, you may find that there is none of the wine left to worry about after
the party!

I will tell you what. The wine may really have gone bad. So what. Believe
me, if your friend made wine, he would not want you to be drinking bad wine
in his memory so throw it out. You have the 5 gal jug. So in remembrance
of your friend, get a 5 gal. wine kit and in 4 months your friends can be
toasting your friends remembrance again with a great batch of wine. The
Kits are easy, we will help you and your friend would love it.

Ray


"*Popa Cork*" > wrote in message
k.net...
>I just received a large 5 gallon jug of very excellent 1996 wine made by a
> friend before his passing.
> Going to the local wine specialist store, I bought 24 bottles and corks, a
> cork press, sanitizer and gained just enough knowledge to be dangerous.
> After sanitizing and preparring, I plunged the siphon down into the brew
> (and some of you can see this coming already) and began siphoning via
> la`pump.
> SO now as you can guess I have sediment in each and every one of the
> bottles
> from the mother jug.
> Is it practical or even adisable to open all the bottles again and filter
> the wine before re-bottleing? I don't mind the process so much, but I
> don't want to damage the wine.
> Now I read where potassium sorbate should be added before bottling to
> stabilize it, but how much for 5 gallons?
>
> One fella I talked to said he would *cut* his home brew with white grape
> juice (not canned) to sweetin it if it was too tart. Is that like
> cheating?
>
> Your help is greatly appreciated.
> Cheers!
>
>
>
>
>
>