Cocktails in Edinburgh

Some cocktails start as an idea behind the bar. Others begin much earlier, shaped by memories that stay with you long before Nectar ever existed. Drops of the River is one of those drinks. This cocktail is a tribute to summer days in Zurich, my hometown, where the River Limmat runs straight through the city. In the warmer months it becomes a place to swim, meet friends, have a drink and slowly drift into the evening before heading out for the night. I wanted to create someth

People often ask me where I like to go for drinks when I am not at Nectar. It is one of my favourite questions to answer, because Edinburgh has quietly become one of the most exciting cocktail cities in the UK, and the honest answer changes depending on what kind of night someone is after. I have been working in hospitality for years, first in Zurich, then in Edinburgh, and I have spent a lot of time in a lot of bars. I know what separates a good cocktail from a great one, an

One of the most common questions we hear at the bar is simple enough: “What’s the best cocktail on the menu?” The honest answer is that there isn’t one. Every cocktail on our menu is designed to stand on its own. No drink is meant to compete with another, and none is intended to be better than the rest. Each cocktail is an individual contribution to the menu, created to express a specific taste, mood, or idea. The real question is not which cocktail is best, but which one is

Edinburgh has no shortage of cocktail bars. Some focus on theatre, some on classics, some on atmosphere. Over the years, working behind bars and visiting many more, I’ve started to notice that the places people remember are rarely defined by one thing alone. When people ask me what makes a great cocktail bar, the answer is never just about the drinks. It’s about how everything comes together. The room, the menu, the service, and the feeling you walk away with at the end of th

When Panos and I first started talking about what the bar at Nectar was going to be, the easiest version of the conversation would have been to agree on a list of well-executed classics and a handful of crowd-pleasing signatures. Something approachable, something that would not confuse people, something that would move quickly on a busy Friday night. We did not do that. What we wanted to build was a cocktail programme that had a genuine point of view. Not drinks designed to l

Nectar has been open on Broughton Street for 6 months now, offering specialised cocktails and greek food.