We always meta our wines, at each racking, and add sorbate if there is any residual sugar; wether they be grape or fruit wines.

Thanks for your response... unfortunately I don't know what "meta our wines" means. I did a google search but nothing matched your use of the term. Can you help out this novice wine maker? Thanks.

I'm sorry; metabisulfite, it comes in 3 forms, powder, camden tablets or liquid. Each time you rack the wine it should be added, we use 5 camden tabs(crushed) per 5 gal. carboy.
We have made some excellent wines from kits. just like the grapes tho, quality counts. The cheap kits are nearly undrinkable, the top o the line kits are very good. Dont your kits have the sulphites and sorbates with them?

Ummm....
Excuse my butting in, fancifowl, but I'm wondering why you would add sulfites "at each racking"?
There should be no need to sterilize your must except before inoculating with yeast culture, and the point of the final addition of sulfite is to make sure fermentation has stopped completely before bottling. If you add sulfites at the time you rack into your secondary, you will at least retard, if not stop, your fermentation.
If you don't let the yeast produce at least 10% alcohol, you'll have long-term storage problems.
Perhaps this is why you sometimes need to add additional alcohol to your wines?

And fanci is quite right, sydney--you're own grape juice is no different from what you'll get in a kit in terms of the fermentation process. Only difference might be that some are already pre-treated with sulfites.

Actually we dont meta at each racking nut almost. Our alcohol runs from 12-16% depending on the wine; meta will not kill the wine yeasties and is not added at any time to stop fermentation. Sorbate can be added if there is residual sugars to prevent a start up after bottling. We add brandy only to fortified wines when we make ports from the elderberry or other wines and some other desert wines.. We also use port or sherry wine yeasts to achieve a higher alcohol, as they will better survive the high alcohol to remain working. Sometimes we will add the brandy at a certain time of fermentation to stop ferm. The addition of meta can help keep a white wine from browning of going off taste.

What I do for 5 gallon batches is when Im ready to rack add 1 crushed campden tablet you can also fortify with other things, but One I've used was Cheap vodka, because It's neutral.The diference between kits is they cant age as long(I read 3 to 5 yrs.), and (I dont make them,but)I heard you don't stir the lees during the primary fermentation you do this with homemade musts(at least I do), because Live yeast cells can drop to the bottom. what I do is stir 3 or 4 days, and the last 3 days let the dead yeast cells fall out.

I think this is the most important part of this post.
You should ferment out to dryness, and then first add sufites, and then sorbate(especially if theirs residual sugar),to sweeten a wine sorbate does not kill yeast, but it stops them from reproducing. So when you add sorbate to a sweet wine your wines yeast wont die imediatly, but will Eat a little more, and just not produce.If you did a Malatic ferementation to turn the malatic acid into a softer buttery lactic acid(= found in milk) you will have to add a chemical(spelling?-->)Lyzome or sterile filter to kill the MLF bacteria or you will get a bad tatse= geranium taste?(Sorry cant spell to good or remember that word to good)

All sounds yucky to me.

I add sugar to up the alcohol. Cheap vodka and brandy would ruin a wine to my taste. I try for about 12%. Higher alcohol could be had from a port yeast.

I never add sulfieds. This has caused a bottle to leak from the cork or be a little fizzy from fermentables stirred up during bottling. Not a show stopper in my book. The wines turn out clean and drinkable. The finest wine I've ever drank in my life has come from my own carboys. Not that store bought wine is all bad but homemade is so much cleaner in taste. So all my wine is dry and I sweeten it at drinking time if I so desire with soda pop or fruit juice. Water is also very excellent mixed with wine turning it into an adult koolaid. My wines stay in the glass fermenter for a year and then are bottled and mostly drank within a few months. I've had bottles for 7-8 years that were still drinkable when uncorked. With homemade grape wine as with most wines getting the all the seeds out before fermentation greatly improves the flavor. I even squeeze them by hand so as not to crush the seeds... squeezing the fruit is the hardest work in wine making.

So anyways I wouldn't go adding any vodka... ewwww! Sulfieds or whatever if your kit says so. Why spend the money on a kit and not get the product intended? At some point you will probably form an opinion about sulfieds and when to use them. One of the great things about making wine is you get to do it your way.