I checked in on the wine again today. Both batches are set at the same gravity reading (about 1.000) as when I last measured them and taste about the same. My mission today was back sweetening. One batch at a time, I poured 4 50ml glasses and used a syringe to a basic syrup (1:1 sugar to water) in measured amounts (0, 3, 6 and 9ml). I then tasted each one and used that to calculate how much sugar syrup to add to the batch. There is a certain amount of rounding in each calculation as I can’t tell exactly how much liquid I have in each batch but I was able to estimate how much syrup I needed, aiming for about 15% for batch 1 and 5% for batch 2.

One of the suggestions I picked up when researching this was not to immediately bottle but to give the wine another week or so in the demijohns. If there is active yeast that survived the treatments I have given them, it should kick off now, while they are still sitting under bubbler valves rather than (potentially explosively) once bottled.

I don’t think either batch will be fantastic but I should end up with something drinkable at the end of the process and a few more thoughts to build on next time I have an opportunity.