Tria Prima Distillery
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Small family-owned boutique nano-distillery at 31 Oborn Road, Mount Barker, approximately 4km from Mount Barker Summit. Founded in 2017 by Paul and Trang Shand. Paul, formerly a geochemist, discovered whisky while exploring for gold in the Scottish Highlands. The name Tria Prima represents the three elements of alchemy: barley, water and wood. Uses an Australian-made 2,200L copper pot still with own mashing and fermentation using Australian barley. Employs a range of cask sizes (100-300L) and types including tawny, apera, bourbon, rum, red wine and champagne-style wine barrels for diverse taste profiles.
Production Details
The Tria Prima Distillery Tale
Four kilometers from Mount Barker Summit, where the Adelaide Hills roll into South Australia's wine country, Paul Shand traded his geochemist's tools for copper and grain in 2017. The irony wasn't lost on him—after years hunting gold beneath Scottish Highland soil, he'd found his treasure in whisky instead, and brought that revelation home to 31 Oborn Road.
The Tria Prima name speaks to Paul's scientific mind: the three elements of alchemy rendered in barley, water, and wood. Here in the Hills, where cool air drifts down from the summit and Adelaide Hills water runs clean through ancient rock, he and his wife Trang built something deliberately small—a nano-distillery that treats each batch like an experiment worth perfecting.
Their Australian-made copper pot still holds 2,200 liters, modest by industry standards but perfectly suited to their philosophy of control over every variable. Paul handles his own mashing and fermentation, working with Australian barley that responds differently to these southern latitudes than its Scottish cousins. The Adelaide Hills climate—warm days, cool nights—pushes and pulls at the maturing spirit with an intensity that would surprise Highland distillers.
In the warehouse, Tria Prima's true innovation reveals itself. Casks ranging from 100 to 300 liters line the walls: tawny and apera barrels speaking to Australia's fortified wine heritage, bourbon and rum casks nodding to tradition, red wine and champagne barrels drawing from the surrounding Hills vineyards. Each size and type offers different surface-to-volume ratios, different extraction rates—a geochemist's approach to flavor development.
The smaller barrels work faster in this climate, the wood breathing with the Hills' temperature swings. What might take a decade in Scotland happens in half the time here, the spirit pulling color and character from oak seasoned by Australian sun and wine.
Standing in their stillhouse, watching steam rise from the copper while Mount Barker's granite peaks catch the light beyond, you understand what drew Paul Shand from gold prospecting to whisky making. Both require patience, precision, and faith in what time and place can create. At Tria Prima, the Adelaide Hills themselves have become the fourth element of their alchemy.