You may or may not like it, but the branding of wines is here to stay. I had the opportunity recently to talk to Philip Laffer, chief winemaker for the Jacob's Creek range of wines, who won Australia's Winemaker of the Year award in 2002. He's the man who's responsible for the great value 'Reserve' range, a step up the quality ladder from the more basic entry level wines. We were being served a rather excellent dinner in Kevin Arundel's Number 10 and I got the chance to talk to him about some techy stuff to do with vine management.

The vine, like all living things, has differing strategies to deal with different circumstances. When it's in a place that suits its root system, when it can find all the nutrients it needs, when there's enough water and sunshine, it becomes a very happy vine and starts to make lots of leaders, leaves and general foliage. It makes a few grapes, too, but that's a kind of after-thought. When it has all that it needs for survival it tries to become a bigger vine, so that it will have more reserves should hard times come in the future. If on the other hand it finds itself under stress, it puts all its energies into creating grapes rather than greenery, since the grapes and their seeds represent the vines best shot at reproduction. Put another way, if you want lots of grapes for winemaking, then you have to make your vines suffer a bit.

This is where you have to be clever. What's best for winemaking man may not necessarily be best for the vine. What you need to do is trick it - make it think it's under threat, but make sure it actually has all that it needs. What winemakers can do this in countries where vines need to be irrigated, where they control a vine's water supply. What the Australians found is that by watering only one side of line of vines, the unwatered side stresses the vine as it tries to deal with a perceived drought. After a couple of weeks you start to water the dry side and stop watering the other, which keeps the vine stressed, but doesn't let any of the root system die from dehydration. With this system you get plenty of fruit and not much foliage - just what the winemaker likes best.

There are many winemakers in Europe who'd love to try this out, but they can't. Firstly it rains here, so you can't control the water supply, and secondly irrigating vines is actually against appellation laws in much of Europe.

Wine of the Week

Jacob's Creek Reserve Shiraz 2000

The reserve range of Jacob's Creek was designed to keep increasingly discerning wine buyers loyal to the brand. Essentially there's no difference in the vinification process between the entry level and the reserve, only in the quality of the grapes. What you get with this wine, for example, is a really deep red colour, a fruity freshness on the nose and on the palate at first, plus all the rich notes that linger in the mouth, like chocolate and vanilla. It's a well-made wine at a fair price.

Widely Available, RRP €12.95