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The Restaurant Guide for Wine Lovers

The Townhouse

56/100
  • Melrose, Scottish Borders
  • Modern British brasserie
  • Mid-range
  • Beta
  • Assessed July 2026
What's this?

These are confidence labels — how sure we are that what we publish still reflects the restaurant's current practice. They are not a judgement on the restaurant; the wine and cooking are scored separately, out of 100.

  • Beta — assessed and scored, but we are still confirming some details (such as the current wine list), so it is published with that caveat.
  • No label — a fully confirmed entry.
  • In development — not yet a review; it appears so you can see where coverage is coming.

Some restaurants change their menus often, and we cannot always keep pace. The date beside the label says when we looked.

We assessed The Townhouse in July 2026 from the menu and wine list as they stood then. Dishes and bottles move on; how to drink well here changes far more slowly. We name bottles from the list we saw and say what to reach for by style, so the advice outlasts the list. Once you are seated, At the Table in the Vinealto app reads the list in front of you.

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.

The full assessment — the wine programme, the pairings that lift a plate, and how the room reads for a wine lover — is for subscribers.

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More in Scottish Borders

66/100 Beta

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.

  • Mid-range, with a fine-wine cellar
  • Assessed July 2026
Read the assessment
63/100 Beta

Provender

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.

  • By the glass
  • Mid-range
  • Assessed July 2026
Read the assessment

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