Cocktails in Edinburgh

I have written about Nectar's cocktail competitions before, and they have mostly been stories about getting close. Panos reaching the Bumbu Originals final. The jalapeno syrup that came out of preparing for the Patron Margarita Challenge and ended up living permanently in Warmth Within. Those articles were about the process of competing, win or lose. This one is different, because for once the story is not about how we did in a competition. It is about how we never actually g

A few weeks ago, a customer got in touch and asked something we had not been asked before: could Nectar would be willing to organise a Cocktail Pop Up in Edinburgh, for a private party, somewhere other than Broughton Street. We said yes. It was our first pop up, and I want to write about how it actually came together, because it closes a loop that has been sitting open since before we even opened the bar. Why having a cocktail pop up in Edinburgh has been on our mind since be

Before entering a cocktail competition for the first time, I had no real idea what the actual structure looked like. A year and ten entries later, I understand the shape of it well enough to map it out properly, and I think it is worth writing down, both for anyone considering entering their first one and as a record of what we have actually been doing behind the bar at Nectar. Stage one: the written submission Almost every competition begins the same way. The host brand rele

I spent a decade in a corporate marketing career before opening Nectar. I have presented to executives, pitched to clients, stood in front of rooms where a significant amount of money hinged on the next fifteen minutes. I assumed that background would carry me reasonably well through a cocktail competition final. It did, to a point. But presenting at the Franklin and Sons final taught me things about presentation that a decade in a boardroom never had the opportunity to teach

Since opening Nectar, I have entered ten cocktail competitions. Diplomatico Artisans of Taste. The Altos Margarita Challenge. The Honkaku Shochu and Awamori Contest. The Patron Spicy Margarita Challenge. Franklin and Sons Flavour in Motion, where I made the final ten in the UK. World Class GB. Bumbu Originals, where I reached the Scotland heat stage. The Bacardi Daiquiri Challenge. Meister Hunter, our Jägermeister entry. And The Open at Ben Lomond, which I am still waiting to

We have written about cocktail competitions before on this blog. This one was probably the biggest thing that has happened to Nectar's drinks programme so far, and I want to write about it honestly, because the honest version is more useful than the version where everything goes well. I did not place in the top three. But before I get to that, I want to be clear about the part I am genuinely, deeply proud of, because it is easy for a loss at the final to overshadow everything

On Wednesday 30 September 2026, Panos and I will leave Broughton Street for one night. Nectar Bar will have a takeover of Dalí's Bar in Zurich, and I want to tell you exactly why this is happening, because the reason is more personal than most bar takeover announcements tend to be. Alfred, the owner of Dalis Zurich Alfred and I grew up together in Zurich. Secondary school, the particular kind of friendship that forms when you are young and slightly reckless and convinced that

I want to tell you about the most frustrating moment in the development of the Nectar cocktail menu. We were in the final days before opening. One cocktail still needed to be finalised, the one that would pair with the prawns that were on our opening menu at the time. We had been working across multiple drinks, Panos and I, running infusions, tasting, adjusting, the way you are supposed to develop a cocktail. I had spent weeks getting to the point where I understood the logic

Some cocktails are built from a technique. Some are built from an ingredient. Some are built from a conversation between bartenders who push each other toward something neither would have found alone. The Laterna was built from a memory. Kyria Stella and the house on Voulgareos Street On Voulgari Street in Thessaloniki, there is a cocktail bar called Laterna. It has outdoor seating, a neighbourhood warmth that most bars spend years trying to manufacture and never quite achiev

There are cocktails on the Nectar menu that announce their complexity before you taste them. The Tzatziki Martini arrives looking like water and tastes like a Greek kitchen. The Local Connection arrives looking milky and tastes like a very serious cocktail. Both do the thing where the visual information and the flavour information take a moment to reconcile. The Florist does something different. It announces everything immediately. It arrives with a foam sitting across the to

The old fashioned is my favourite cocktail. It is Panos's favourite too. We agree on very little when it comes to what should go on the Nectar menu, which is why the drinks programme is as good as it is, but on this we have always been aligned. The old fashioned is the drink that, when everything else has been considered and ordered and discussed, is the one we both end up coming back to. Which makes it slightly embarrassing that it took us a year to put one on the menu. Not

One of the first guests to try the Bees Essence described it in a way that has stayed with me. They said they had never had a cocktail that keeps going the way this one does. First there is whisky. Then there is sweetness. Then there is spice. And as the spice fades, the other flavours come back. Not a diminishing experience but a circular one, each element returning in sequence, the drink still unfolding long after the glass is empty. That description is more accurate than a

Not every cocktail that makes it onto the permanent menu was designed to be there. Some are built with that intention from the beginning: a concept developed over weeks, a technique refined across many iterations, a name chosen before the recipe is finalised. The Old Beanut was like that. So was the Tzatziki Martini. Both arrived with a deliberateness to them, a sense that they had been thought about until they were ready. The Raspberry Paloma arrived differently. It went ont

The Local Connection is a white negroni. That is the most accurate short description of it. It is also not quite like any white negroni you have tried before, because two of its four ingredients are unusual enough to deserve a proper explanation, and because the technique used to finish it changes the experience of drinking it in a way that the description on the menu does not fully prepare you for. Start with what you know, or what you think you know, and work outward from t

There is a version of Edinburgh that exists in photographs and travel guides. The castle silhouetted against a brooding sky. The Royal Mile in full tourist flow. Arthur's Seat at sunrise. These things are real and they are genuinely worth experiencing. But the Edinburgh that the people who live here love is something slightly different: the city that appears in June when the days get long, in July when the terraces fill up and the light stays until nearly eleven at night, and

One of the things I enjoy most about being part of Edinburgh's bar scene is that the people doing the most interesting work in it are not far away. They are on the same streets, at the same events, in some cases a ten-minute walk from Broughton Street. Iain McPherson is the founder of Panda and Sons on Queen Street, which we have written about before as one of the best cocktail bars in the world. He has spent over a decade building a reputation for techniques that push what a

One of the questions we get asked most often is how we decide what goes on the menu. The honest answer is that the menu is never quite decided. It is always in the process of becoming something slightly better than it was. Every three months we reprint. Every month we run a special. Every week something new is being tried behind the bar or tested in the kitchen, quietly and without announcement, waiting to see whether it is good enough to earn its place in front of a guest. T

There is a moment with the Warmth Within that almost every guest experiences and almost none of them expect. The heat arrives, but not where you thought it would. Not on the lips. Not on the tongue. Somewhere further back, lower down, a warmth that spreads rather than stings and fades slowly rather than demanding immediate relief. It is the kind of spice that makes you want another sip rather than a glass of water. That effect is not accidental. It is the whole point of the d

There is a moment that happens at almost every table at Nectar when a clarified cocktail arrives for the first time. The guest looks at it. Then at the menu. Then back at the drink. Then usually at whoever is with them, with an expression that sits somewhere between confusion and curiosity. The drink in the glass looks nothing like the ingredients listed next to it. It is clear, or close to clear, when everything about its description suggested it should be cloudy, rich, or d

The martini is probably the most misunderstood cocktail on any bar menu. Not because it is complicated to make, but because the number of decisions involved in ordering one can feel overwhelming to anyone who has not done it before. The result is that most people default to a single combination they have heard somewhere, "very dry, shaken, straight up," without fully understanding what those words mean or whether that combination actually reflects what they enjoy. The martini