Smith & Gertrude Stockbridge
The couple who own this bar also own the bakery whose bread comes out on the cheese board.3
Why go
Amy Galbraith Findlater and Duncan Findlater have been the only two officers of the company since the day it was incorporated in September 2014, with no resignations and nobody else ever appointed, and they opened here in 2015.7 Their menu prints its two suppliers on the page, Company Bakery and George Mewes, and Company Bakery is theirs.4 Owning the bread under a cheese board is a small vertical integration, and it means they never have to shop half the plate on price.
The cheese is the half the food menu is built around. Eleven singles stand on the card by name, from a Scottish goat's Bonnet through 18 month Comté and Tomme de Savoie to a 48 month Gouda and a Bleu d'Auvergne, and you can take a house board of three or five or build your own. George Mewes is a cheesemonger on Dean Park Street, three minutes' walk away, and nobody has published a maturing arrangement, so this is buying from a good monger and not an affineur's programme. The seasonal markers are printed on the menu itself, tomato salad in summer and sausage rolls and baked Camembert in autumn.
The published wine list runs past 250 bottles, sectioned sparkling through sherry. The buying shows most clearly in the Champagne, eleven bottles from GBP 64 to GBP 135 with growers like Larmandier-Bernier and Nicolas Maillart standing next to the Roederer and the Billecart-Salmon. Orange gets a section of its own, ten wines from GBP 49 to GBP 105, from a Penedès Xarel-lo through a Kakheti Kisi made in qvevri to a 2015 Ribolla Gialla. Six sherries run from a half bottle of Equipo Navazos manzanilla en rama at GBP 30 to Lustau's San Emilio Pedro Ximénez at GBP 60.5 Star Wine List reported in 2023 that every Friday they open a magnum or bigger,2 and the list carries five of them, from a GBP 98 Sijnn white out of the Western Cape to a GBP 167 Grivot Bourgogne Rouge. The by-the-glass list lives on a chalkboard and the venue says it refreshes daily.5 No preservation kit is named anywhere, and nobody here holds a published sommelier qualification.
Order this / avoid
- Order: a wine and cheese flight, GBP 25 on its own and GBP 31 with the cheese cut against it. On 4 August 2026 one of the two was three wines off Palomino, the sherry grape: El Muelle de Olaso from Bodegas Luis Perez in Cádiz with Comté, Barbadillo's Patinegro out of Jerez with Manchego, and Lustau's Los Arcos amontillado with Old Winchester. The other poured Viognier, Gamay and Syrah from Chai Saint Olive, an urban winery in Lyon. Two run at a time, and the venue's own two pages disagree on how often they turn over, one saying every month and the other every six weeks.6 The List says the format
is a brilliant way to expand your palate.
1 - Order: a five cheese board (GBP 26 on 4 August 2026) with the bread, crackers, grapes and chutney it comes with. Three cheeses is GBP 21 and singles are GBP 6 to GBP 9 if you would rather pick.
- Order: the 48 month Gouda out of the singles. Four years of aging drives the moisture out and leaves the tyrosine crystals that crunch, so it eats closer to a hard sweet than to cheese, and it is the widest gap on the board from everything beside it.
- Order: a grilled cheese (GBP 8.50 to GBP 11). The card names each one by the cheese in it: Montgomery cheddar, Lincolnshire Poacher, fontal with chorizo, and gorgonzola dolce with taleggio. It is the sleeper on the menu.
- Order: the East Coast Cured salami off the charcuterie, singles GBP 9 to GBP 10 and a board at GBP 26. East Coast Cured makes it a few miles away, which puts the meat, the bread and the chocolate shards from Edward & Irwyn all on Edinburgh suppliers.4
- Avoid: Monday and Tuesday, when this room is dark and the booking inbox goes unread until Wednesday.4
What locals & experts say
- The List's Eat & Drink 365 guide (May 2026), writing about both Smith & Gertrude rooms together:
These gorgeous neighbourhood wine bars in Stockbridge and Portobello have a relaxed vibe, with expert staff and interesting wine choices. While you can simply pop in for a glass, the real fun lies in the wine flights with artisanal cheese pairing. These change monthly.
1 - Ruth Spivey, Star Wine List (November 2023), on the format and where the weight sits:
a relaxed walk-in wine bar and shop, with over 100 international bottles to drink in… The menu is wonderfully cheese-centric - cheese boards, grilled cheese sandwiches and burrata plates - plus charcuterie and a few veggie snacks.
2 - Amy Findlater, asked by Gaby Soutar what her last supper would be (2021), answered with the shop's whole thesis in one line:
Gorgonzola dolce, 30 months aged Comté and Saint Felicien with grapes, honey and sourdough.
That is an interview answer, not a review of her own bar.3 - No critic has reviewed this room. Neither The Scotsman nor the Good Food Guide has written about it and nothing scored exists, so the two judgments above are a guide entry and a wine-specialist listing, and the rest of this rests on the two lists the venue publishes.
Good to know
- Hours: Wednesday and Thursday 4pm to 11pm, Friday and Saturday 1pm to midnight, Sunday 1pm to 10pm. Closed Monday and Tuesday.4
- Booking: walk-in for four or fewer, and they mean it. Five or more books with a GBP 50 deposit, and the private wine cellar downstairs seats up to fourteen. The booking inbox is read Wednesday to Sunday.
- Sites: two rooms, both owned by the Findlaters. This page is 26 Hamilton Place in Stockbridge. The Portobello room at 254 Portobello High Street opened in summer 2022, is a separate premises with its own inspection record, and a review or a photo tagged Portobello says nothing about this address.
- Hygiene: Food Hygiene Information Scheme Pass, inspected 24 January 2024. That is eighteen and a half months old, right on the bound where a rating stops being current information.8
- Also worth knowing: there is a wine club, six bottles a month, delivered across the central Edinburgh postcodes.
- Getting there: Hamilton Place is the Stockbridge high street. eòrna is 110 m up the road, Skua is 86 m away on St Stephen Street, and The Last Word Saloon is 109 m off. George Mewes, the cheesemonger on the menu, is a few doors around the corner on Dean Park Street.
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: "Wine bar." That is the whole of his note on this place, as he wrote it. He has the category right, and the room is more specific than the words: eleven cheeses named on the card, and a wine list past 250 bottles with sections of its own for orange, magnums and sherry.
Verdict
should-visit — THE RUNG MOVED THIS ROUND, from could-visit, and the reason is that the round-1 entry was wrong about the place. It argued the wine was undocumented; the venue publishes a priced list past 250 bottles, and reading it changes what this room is. The Champagne is bought grower-first, with Larmandier-Bernier and Nicolas Maillart standing beside the Roederer and the Billecart-Salmon. Orange gets a section of its own, ten wines to a 2015 Ribolla Gialla. There are six sherries, five magnums and a by-the-glass list the venue refreshes daily on a chalkboard. That is a real cellar, and it sits under a cheese counter of eleven named singles with the bread coming from a bakery the same two owners have run since before this bar existed. The flight is what ties the two halves together and it is the send: GBP 25, or GBP 31 with the cheese cut against it, and the pairing on 4 August 2026 was three Palominos against Comte, Manchego and Old Winchester, which is a genuinely instructive hour. Against Good Brothers in the same slice this room has the deeper list and the weaker rotation story; against The Black Grape it has more bottles and no kitchen. It stops short of must-visit because no critic has ever reviewed it, no score of any kind exists, and the flight wines turn over, so what you are sent for is a format rather than a fixed thing.