We show that the Reeb vector, and hence in particular the volume, of a Sasaki–Einstein metric on the base of a toric Calabi–Yau cone of complex dimension n may be computed by minimising a function Z on which depends only on the toric data that defines the singularity. In this way one can extract certain geometric information for a toric Sasaki–Einstein manifold without finding the metric explicitly. For complex dimension n  =  3 the Reeb vector and the volume correspond to the R–symmetry and the a central charge of the AdS/CFT dual superconformal field theory, respectively. We therefore interpret this extremal problem as the geometric dual of a–maximisation. We illustrate our results with some examples, including the Y ^p,q singularities and the complex cone over the second del Pezzo surface.