You could be right about his question. Free SO2 needs to be checked periodically, whether one racks or not.
All wines don't necessarily benefit from aging on fine lees. Although the type of wine and whether or not it was from kit were not mentioned, it is an easy assumption that the wine is from a kit. Until one has actually made a few kits it can be harder to realize that what works well for fruit wines doesn't always suite kit wines and visa-verse.
It is not at all unusual for a wine to continue to drop sediment for the first 6 to 12 months. Especially for reds, if a person doesn't rack just before bottling time, it is easy to believe that there is no sediment present because it can't easily be seen. Then when the wine level gets down toward the bottom, the person realizes the sediment is there and that much of it has already been bottled. And no, a little sediment in the bottle is not the end of the world.
Certainly there is no need to rack if there is no sediment present. Even a tiny bit of sediment is not really going to hurt anything except at bottling time. It is my belief that with kit wines, potential oxidation is not so much an issue as not fully degassing the wine. Many new wine makers bottle so soon (per kit instructions) that oxidation seldom becomes an issue. How many times on this forum do we read about wine getting oxidized, compared to wine ending up being gassy?
As long as SO2 levels are properly maintained, an extra racking will come closer to resulting in a less gassy wine than it will oxidation. If new wine makers, who can't test for free SO2 levels, follow the recommendation to add 1/8th teaspoon Kmeta about every 6 to 8 weeks, their wine will be protected.
Here's what I do:
Follow a racking schedule that with each racking, the time to the next racking is doubled or tripled until the wine is 12 months or older. With this schedule, if one racks and gets no sediment, it is likely no more sediment will fall out. However, unless you racked very recently, I would still rack just before bottling.
Sometimes late adjustments are made where tannins or something like Bioless is added to a wine that has already cleared. In such a case one can bank on sediment falling again for several months following that adjustment.
Here's an example of what I would do if I should bottle a kit wine six months after it was first started, which I seldom do. Rack after secondary is completed, degas and stabilize at the same time and add any clarifiers in the order given by the kit instructions. Rack again in 2 months; rack again at the six month mark, just before bottling.
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