life after stabilizing?

Well at least there is one lesson learned. It is always a good idea to check the SG when you think the fermentation has finished. If it is above 1.000 you can generally say that fermentation has not finished properly. It is also a good idea to take the SG before you add things like wood chips and yeast at the beginning. (But in between those 2 readings I leave my wines well alone -- beginners tend to think that they should be doing things to their wine every day! -- they, the wines, largely prefer to be left alone to get on with it). I find that most of my wines ferment out down to about 0.994 -- 0.990 -- but I do leave them to the bitter end when absolute no gas is passing through the fermentation lock

1. The fermentation may just have slowed a great deal due to low temperatures -- in which case a warming will start it up again, either with artificial heating like fermentation bin belts/pads, or as spring gets under way and the ambient temperature rises. If you have bottled your wine in this condition then you are like to lose some corks ( or if you are using screw caps you may have the odd explosion and an irate wife!).
2. It may have become "stuck" which happens sometimes when the yeast is overcome by too much sugar. This would normally happen ( I am not sure how to define normally!) with an SG which is appreciably higher than 1.000 say

1.020 or even higher. What is needed in this case is to kick start the fermentation again. This is done by activating a yeast as a starter and feeding it slowly with say a 1/2 pint of must and when it gets going with that, add another 1/2 pint or so bit by bit. If you are trying to restart 6 US gals then it is a good idea to build up the fermentation in the "restarter" till you have a gallon. Then you just add that back to your original must and it will usually take off too!

3 With regard to your "stabilisation". If you have added Potassium Sorbate to your wine during the stabilisation then you will probably not be able to restart it again. I say this because a lot of kit wines ( especially the less expensive ones) combine both Metabisulphite and Sorbate in their "Stabilisation packages". Sorbate prevents the yeast from reproducing (a sort of chemical condom!)

4.Assuming that this is not the case then you can restart the wine that has not been bottled -- do take the SG and it might give us a better idea of the problem.

5 You can also unbottle the batch you have already bottled and try a restart. But you are putting the wine at risk especially if the SG is quite low. You are exposing your wine to a lot of air again as you empty the bottles and also the amount of CO2 left in that wine will be minimal. Again if you had taken the SG it would be easier to advise. My feeling is that if it only has a small amount of residual sugar left and the alcohol content is perhaps as high as 8%, then leave it and use the wine as a summer "spritzer" or the basis for a summer punch.

IHTH

John, You have excellent advice here. As an heads up I just restarted two fermentations using pretty much the outline you were given. Both were at around 1.015, which is 'pretty stuck'. (I bought old pails of cold fresh juice, it was an experiment.)

I used Lalvin K1V1116 and EC1118, one on each. The EC1118 was more vigorous and is close to complete now. I used a general purpose heating pad set on medium attched with two old belts, then wrapped 2 heavy towels. I have a cold basement too.

Joe

Thanks for all the advice. When stabilizing I did add the metabisulphite, but not the sorbate, which I don't bother with. If was to make up some yeast starter, and add it slowly to the must, keeping it nice and warm of course, would the metabisuphite kill it off? The s.g. seems to be just below

metabisulphite,

If your S.G. is at or below 1.000, you may not be dealing with a stuck fermentation. If you are, having added the standard pkg of metabisulphite shouldn't prevent renewed fermentation. The normal strains of wine yeast are pretty tolerant of sulphites. You could test it, of course, and you could lower the sulphite level by racking back and forth a few times (rack and splash). But you would have to have a pretty high sulphite level to knock out the yeast entirely.

Doug

Actually you add the must slowly to the starter; just keep doubling it once you see it is fermenting well. Once you are up to a gallon you are ok to add it to the remainder of the must. You may want to consider some yeast nutrient also if you can get some. It would not need a lot. Cheap insurance.

Joe

And it isn't going to be easy to get it going again with the SG sitting just below 1.000. A big part of the process will be to raise the temperature substantially and make sure that it is well "topped up"-- although you have never said what the temperature of the must/wine is. And don't be extravagant with the nutrient I must say ( pun intended) that I would cut my losses and use it for a summer spritzer but good luck anyway