The Story Behind Our New Bottles
Keeping the Flowers, Growing the Legacy
At Tamborine Mountain Distillery, every bottle tells a story.
Not only about what we distil here on Tamborine Mountain, but about who we are, where we began and the hands that helped shape us.
Our distinctive floral bottles have been part of the Tamborine Mountain Distillery story from the very beginning. And as we introduce our new 700ml bottles, those familiar flowers are coming with us.
Because this isn't simply a new bottle.
It's the next chapter of a design that began decades ago with a paintbrush in the hand of our co-founder, Alla Svetlana Ward.
Where It All Began: Paintbrush in Hand
In the early days of Tamborine Mountain Distillery, Alla brought together two worlds: her Ukrainian heritage and the emerging world of Australian craft distilling.
An artist, musician, painter and distiller, Alla began hand-painting the bottles herself with colourful floral designs inspired by Ukrainian folk art.
And we mean every bottle.
Each was individually painted by hand, meaning no two were exactly alike. Alla became remarkably fast at it, painting around 30 bottles an hour as the distillery grew.
But her artwork didn't stop with the bottles.
Pots, windows, doors and tables became canvases too, filling the distillery with colour and character.
Slowly, those flowers became inseparable from Tamborine Mountain Distillery itself.
The Ukrainian Inspiration Behind Our Floral Bottles
Alla's designs were inspired by the rich decorative traditions of Ukrainian folk art, where flowers and botanical motifs have long appeared across painting, embroidery and other forms of traditional art.
For Alla, bringing those floral designs to the bottles was a way of carrying part of her heritage into the distillery she was building in Australia.
What began as hand-painted decoration became something much bigger.
Customers recognised the flowers.
They remembered the bottles.
And over time, the floral artwork became part of Tamborine Mountain Distillery's visual identity.
The flowers weren't simply sitting on the bottle.
They were telling our story.
From Hand-Painted Bottles to a Lasting Design
There was, however, one problem with painting every bottle by hand.
Tamborine Mountain Distillery kept growing.
As demand increased, hand-painting every individual bottle became increasingly difficult to sustain. The painted bottles also presented practical challenges when it came to commercial washing and reuse.
We needed to find a way forward without leaving Alla's artwork behind.
So, around a decade ago, one of her original floral designs was carefully preserved and adapted for permanent application to our bottles.
The painting may no longer have been applied one bottle at a time by Alla's hand, but the artwork itself remained hers.
That distinction mattered to us.
It allowed the floral identity of Tamborine Mountain Distillery to continue while creating bottles better suited to a growing distillery.
The 375ml Bottle: A Tamborine Mountain Distillery Signature
For the past decade, our distinctive 375ml coloured bottles have carried Alla's floral artwork.
Over time, they have become one of the most recognisable parts of Tamborine Mountain Distillery.
You see the flowers on a shelf and you know where the bottle came from.
They connect today's spirits and liqueurs with the artistic beginnings of the distillery and with the woman whose paintbrush helped create its identity.
So when it came time to rethink our larger bottles, there was really only one place we wanted to begin.
With the flowers.
Introducing Our New 700ml Bottles
In the past, some of our 700ml bottles featured labels created by local artists to represent individual flavours.
They were beautiful and distinctive, but with a range that has grown to more than 80 spirits and liqueurs, creating an individual artistic treatment for every expression wasn't practical.
More importantly, we wanted the larger bottles to feel unmistakably like Tamborine Mountain Distillery.
So we returned to the design that has been with us from the beginning.
Our new 700ml bottles carry the signature floral artwork inspired by Alla's original hand-painted bottles, bringing the heritage of our smaller bottles into the larger format.
It's a new bottle, but its identity is anything but new.
A Hidden Detail from Alla's Original Artwork
We also wanted the larger bottle to add something new to the story.
Turn it around and you'll discover a floral design on the back taken from one of Alla's original artworks that had not previously appeared on our bottles.
It's a small detail, but an important one.
A little more of Alla's artistry.
A little more of the history.
And another connection between the bottles we're producing today and the hand-painted originals that came before them.
Changing the Bottle, Keeping the Story
Packaging changes.
Distilleries grow.
New spirits are created, new people discover us and bottles travel considerably further than they did when Tamborine Mountain Distillery first began.
But some things deserve to travel with you.
For us, those flowers are one of them.
Our new 700ml bottle isn't about replacing the past. It's about carrying it forward — preserving a piece of Alla's Ukrainian heritage and the artistic identity that has been part of Tamborine Mountain Distillery from the beginning.
From a paintbrush...
to a bottle...
to a signature recognised by generations of customers.
The bottles may grow. The flowers remain.
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