Tasmanian Whisky and Spirit Trail

Tasmania produces some of the most awarded whisky in the world. The distilleries making it are scattered across the island — from the Tamar Valley in the north to the Tasman Peninsula in the south — tucked into farmland, perched on ridgelines, hidden down gravel roads. Getting people to find them, choose between them, and actually make the trip was the job.

The Tasmanian Whisky & Spirits Trail already existed. It had a directory of sorts: a grid of distillery images, a static tours page, basic profiles. The bones were there. But it was a brochure when it needed to be a platform. A visitor could see that distilleries existed. They couldn’t easily filter them, map them, compare what each one offered, or build a route. The site informed. It didn’t guide.
That’s what we came in to fix.

From brochure to platform. Same brand, completely different engine.

The brief was to rebuild the Spirits Trail into something that could genuinely do the job it was meant to do: take a whisky lover who’d never been to Tasmania and turn them into someone with a route planned, a car packed, and a list of cellar doors to visit.

That meant a filterable, searchable distillery directory with a live map. Using an interactive Google Map together with rich, structured profiles that worked beautifully regardless of what images a distillery could provide. Curated itineraries that did the thinking for visitors, with the flexibility to make them their own. And an architecture underneath it all that could hold the weight of a growing industry.

We used the existing TWST brand and expanded it to fit into its new home for this project.

WEB DESIGN

THE DISTILLERY DIRECTORY
Every cellar door on the island, findable in seconds.

The centrepiece of the rebuild is a split-panel directory: a filterable list on the left, a live Google Map with pins on the right, every distillery scannable and ready to explore. Visitors can filter by region, spirit type, and keyword: narrowing from “all of Tasmania’s distilleries” to “gin producers in the north with a cafe” in a few clicks.

Each distillery profile is built on a Custom Post Type structure with ACF Pro field groups, which means the data is consistent, structured, and queryable across every listing. The profile layout was designed so that whatever imagery a distillery can provide, the page looks considered. Rich details sit in a structured sidebar: region, spirit types, opening days, public holiday hours, and an amenities checklist covering cellar door, cafe, dog-friendly, wheelchair access, motorhome-friendly, and picnic areas. A photo gallery, embedded Google Map, live Google Reviews feed, and previous/next distillery navigation round out each profile, giving visitors everything they need to decide whether to visit, and how to get there.

THE ITINERARIES
The thinking done. The driving left to you.

The itineraries section turns the directory into a genuine trip-planning tool. A filterable index — by trail type, region, and journey style — leads visitors to curated routes with numbered stops, photography, contextual writing, driving distances, and an embedded route map. Each itinerary hands off to Google Maps for live navigation when the visitor is ready to go, while staying on-site long enough to tell the story of the journey.

Visitors can follow a suggested itinerary exactly, reverse it depending on where they’re coming from, or use it as a starting point and add their own stops. The platform guides without prescribing.

THE ARCHITECTURE
Good foundations win.

The rebuild was done in Oxygen Builder with WP Gridbuilder powering the filterable directory and map: a combination that gave us precise layout control and a robust, performant filtering layer without bloating the codebase.

The Custom Post Type structure for distilleries means the data is clean, extensible, and ready for whatever comes next. When the TWSA is ready to let member distilleries update their own listings through a front-end form, the architecture already has room for it. The hard decisions were made at the start, so future additions are builds, not rebuilds.