Wine in Edinburgh

My father visits Edinburgh fairly regularly. Every time he does, we end up at Nectar, which is as it should be. He sits at the bar, catches up with the team, and then does the thing that still makes me laugh every single time: he orders a cocktail. This is a man who almost exclusively drinks wine and beer. He is Czech, which means he was raised on some of the finest lager in the world, in a country that takes its brewing with a seriousness that most nations reserve for things

There is a moment that happens at Nectar fairly regularly with this wine. Someone is ordering a bottle, usually because they have asked what goes well with the meat platter and I have pointed them toward the Xinomavro. The bottle arrives at the table. I open it and pour the first glass. They take a sip, pause slightly, and then look at the wine with a different kind of attention. Not confusion exactly. More like recalibration. They were expecting something, and this is someth

If there is one bottle I genuinely love opening at Nectar, it is our Assyrtiko. Not only because of how it tastes, but because every time the cork comes out, it starts a story at the table. On our menu we describe it in three words. Crisp. Citrus. Lively. Those three words capture exactly what happens in the glass. It feels bright and energetic, refreshing without being simple, and perfectly suited to the way we like to eat and drink. The Crystals Everyone Asks About One of m

There is a specific memory that comes back to me every time I look at the Montepulciano Castelvecchio d'Abruzzo on the shelf. I am in the back seat of a car somewhere in central Italy. I am eight, maybe nine. My brother is next to me. Between us is a laptop, and we are watching Gladiator, because that was the film we watched on every long car journey in that period of my childhood and neither of us ever got tired of it. Outside the window, the Italian countryside is doing wha

There is a particular kind of pleasure that comes from a wine that misleads you slightly before it delivers. Not in a dishonest way. In the way that a great film does, where the first scene sets an expectation that the second scene quietly and deliberately overturns. The Wide River Shiraz from Robertson, South Africa does exactly that. It announces itself one way on the nose and then arrives quite differently on the palate. That gap, small but meaningful, is the thing that ma

When a table is filled with shared plates, choosing the right wine can feel more complicated than it needs to be. At Nectar, food is designed to be ordered generously and enjoyed together. That means your table will often feature vegetables, meat, fish and cheese all at once. Rather than trying to find a wine that perfectly matches everything, we recommend a simpler and far more enjoyable approach. Start by deciding which dish you want to be the focus , and let that lead your

At Nectar , our wine list follows the same philosophy as our food and cocktails. Every wine has a purpose. Rather than offering multiple bottles that compete with one another, our list is designed so that each wine stands on its own , pairing naturally with different styles of food. These pairings are not always written on the menu, but they are carefully considered when the list is built. The result is a wine selection that encourages exploration and conversation, whether yo