Rack to secondary to late?

mekanickel,

By all means, top it up. Even better, find a container which holds the exact volume, or a combination of containers. That way you don't need to dilute or otherwise change the wine. You can also make up a small ullage by adding clean glass marbles, though this complicates racking. In any event, exclude almost every mililiter of air from the container (leave some space for temp changes & expansion). Too late? Not at all. As long as there are no off odors, you're in fine shape.

Good Luck, Mike MTM

If you sulfited as the kit instructed, you're okay, but get rid of that air as per MTM's suggestions.

Jack Keller, The Winemaking Home Page

A liter is more water than I would want to add to my wine to top up but you need to do something. You could use a bottle of similar wine or you could blow the air out with some inert gas. You can get spray cans of gas at wine stores that are fine for this purpose. Blow the air out and quickly replace the airlock. Then swirl the carboy a bit to cause CO2 to be released which will further blow out any remaining air. Then do not open the carboy again until it needs to be racked again. Do not monkey around with it or test it for anything.

Ray

I am thinking that if you are down a litre that you didn't have the primary at 23 litres, and so it wouldn't be considered diluting the product to top up with water... unless you left a lot of liquid in the primary when you racked.