The Restaurant Guide for Wine Lovers
The Mustard Seed
The Mustard Seed is a relaxed riverside brasserie in Inverness serving modern Scottish food from a seasonally-changing card. Its wine programme achieves real mutual elevation for its size — a carefully curated, merchant-backed list whose seafood-friendly whites and soft reds match the kitchen well, with three pour sizes giving genuine flexibility and a Cellar Selection that reaches above the room. It will most reward the diner who likes to drink by the glass across a meal and values an honest, well-chosen short list over an encyclopaedic one.
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The Three Chimneys
Colbost, Highland
Modern Scottish fine dining
The Three Chimneys is a long-established Skye restaurant whose tasting menu of Hebridean produce is served alongside one of the most complete and characterful wine lists in the Highlands. The programme is sommelier-run and generous by the glass and Coravin, deep in English sparkling, Burgundy and Bordeaux yet genuinely curious about Greece, Georgia and Armenia, with a sweet and fortified section that rises to the food. It will reward anyone who wants their wine matched course by course, whether by the glass with guidance or from a cellar with real reach.
Read the assessmentRiver House
Inverness, Highland
Modern Scottish seafood
River House is a long-running Inverness seafood restaurant whose Italian-inflected kitchen works almost entirely in Scottish fish and shellfish. Its wine programme achieves genuine mutual elevation — a list of lean, saline, mostly unoaked whites built precisely for that food, so the hardest oily-fish plates are the ones it answers best, most of them by the glass. It will most reward the diner who comes for the seafood and wants a crisp, well-chosen white in the glass to match it.
Read the assessmentRocpool
Inverness, Highland
Modern Scottish brasserie
Rocpool is a long-standing riverside brasserie in Inverness cooking modern Scottish food with a strong Mediterranean and Asian streak. Its wine programme reaches well beyond what the format requires — a wide, curious, grower-minded list that answers the kitchen's seafood and spice fluently by the glass, let down only by the complete absence of dessert and fortified wine for the cheese and puddings. It will most reward the curious drinker who likes to explore an eclectic list of characterful whites and indigenous reds well above the Highland average.
Read the assessmentCafe 1
Inverness, Highland
Modern Scottish and international bistro
Cafe 1 is a long-running Inverness bistro cooking Scottish produce through an international, often pan-Asian, lens. The wine programme earns its place on a genuinely well-organised, style-banded list that pours widely by the glass and reaches up to serious Burgundy and Italian reds, held a little short by buying that leans on familiar labels and by no printed pairing steer. It will most reward the diner who wants to match a wide, spice-inflected menu by the glass with the help of a clearly signposted list.
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