I agree with the bulk aging then sweetening and the reasons everyone stated. But another reason is that sugar should not be added to a wine until it is completely done clearing out the wine yeast. You want the wine to to drop out as many yeast cells as possible. Then you rack off the yeast cells, and this will prevent refermentation when sugar and sorbate is added. It's also very important to be sure that the sugar and sorbate is evenly distributed thruout the wine.
E C Kraus has a very nice discussion of this subject on their site under blog/ wine-yeast.
So should we not stabilize either? I thought it needed to be stabilized before aging.
Age dry and sweeten later. I want the flavors to develop as much as possible before I do any sweetening trials. If the wine is still young and "raw" and I sweeten it to taste then, it may be completely different and out of balance by the time it would be bottled.
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