My, my, my! I sincerely hope you are joking about that lawsuit — first, because I certainly hope you are under no impending financial harm, but also because I’d assume no home winemaking judge would really sue for such an honest (and relatively common) mistake!
Whatever the situation, my advice might appear to be not so much advice as perhaps a “that’s just the way it is” statement of fact. The truth is that you can’t really remove sulfur dioxide easily from wine. There is no process, no fining agent and no additive that removes large amounts of sulfites from wine except time and the nature of the wine itself. (Small amounts of sulfites can be removed with hydrogen peroxide. See “Kit First Aid” in the December 2002-January 2003 issue.) Free sulfur dioxide, or unbound sulfur dioxide, will eventually decrease in concentration and will become less detectable with time. This is because sulfur dioxide, over time, binds up with oxygen, aldehydes and sugars (among other things) in wines and become part of what is called “total sulfur dioxide.” This is much less volatile and thus much less sniff-able. I don’t know where the free sulfur dioxide levels of your wine are currently sitting, but if they are under 70 ppm or less, I think there is hope. (If not, down the drain with it.) Many German or Austrian Rieslings are bottled with free sulfur dioxide levels this high and, over the period of about a year, come down to drinkable levels. Give your wine some time. Pop a bottle in a month or two and see what you think. Your wine might grow to be drinkable just in time to celebrate the end of your libel counter-suit.
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