How do we define quality in wine? Thoughts from our viticulturist, Conrad.

September 17, 2025

I recently overhead the question: how do you define wine quality? This got me thinking about our Command Shiraz and what’s important in what we do in the vineyard to deliver the calibre of fruit needed to make our iconic wine.

A lot of what makes Command what it is lies outside of our control (climate, soil type, vine age…) but there is still plenty we can do to influence the vines. Pruning is always the first point at which conversations about quality begin. How many buds? Where to take canes from? What to look for in a cane? The list of decisions is endless. Our foundational principles for Command are to give the vines fewer buds than they can grow and to maintain living wood. This allows us to keep irrigation turned off so the fruit is more concentrated (and expressive) and build up vine nutrient reserves so they can have resilience through extremes of weather.

Our second driver is canopy management. This encompasses many different aspects but the main concept I’ve got in mind is shoot thinning. Removing excess shoots takes off unproductive or double shoots. These can cause shading as well as produce bunches that are inferior to primary shoots. We also want to make sure the vines are putting their nutrients and energy into fruit production so shoot thinning in spring encourages the vines to do so.

The final pillar of quality is soil health, another area that begs endless further ideas and questions: ultimately, we want the soil to be capable of delivering just enough nutrients while also supporting as much beneficial, uncompetitive life as possible. There is still so much to soil interactions that is not understood so we want to maintain complexity here without pressuring the vines excessively.