The Restaurant Guide for Wine Lovers
The Townhouse
The Townhouse is a Borders hotel brasserie and restaurant cooking a seasonal modern British menu from good Scottish produce across two rooms. Its wine programme is a traditional bottle list with a genuine and gently-priced Bordeaux heart, let down for a wine lover only by the lack of a by-the-glass offer and a little looseness in how it is kept. It will most reward the diner who is happy to choose a bottle for the table and knows to look to the clarets, where the list is at its most serious and its best value.
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Burts Hotel
Melrose, Scottish Borders
Modern Scottish
Burts Hotel is a long-standing Borders coaching inn serving settled Scottish-French cooking across a bistro and a restaurant menu. Its wine programme earns its standing on a classic, merchant-supplied cellar with genuine claret and white-Burgundy depth and real maturity, let down by an absent by-the-glass offer and no dessert or fortified wine to close a meal. It will most reward the traditional drinker who wants a well-chosen bottle of Bordeaux or a crisp white with Scottish beef and fish, and is happy to drink by the bottle.
Read the assessmentProvender
Melrose, Scottish Borders
Modern Scottish and French
Provender is a Border town dining room cooking a seasonal modern Scottish and French menu from an excellent Scottish larder. Its wine programme earns its place on a broad, keenly-poured by-the-glass offer and a compact, intelligently chosen list that lets a table drink a glass to each course, let down only by the gaps a fuller list would close — no dessert or fortified wine for the puddings, and no printed pairings to point the way. It will most reward the diner who likes to drink by the glass across a meal and wants a considered, unfussy list to do it from.
Read the assessment