Tipsy Midgie Whisky Bar
Colin Hinds cooked for thirty years, then stage 4 throat and neck cancer took the job away, and he planned this bar from a chemotherapy chair.2
Why go
He had the stock already. The collection behind and beneath this bar runs to 3,500 bottles with over 800 open at any one time, which is the number that matters because an open bottle is one you can order.2 Hinds started in kitchens in Glasgow at 14, worked London, France, the Caribbean and Australia, and trained under Cheong Liew; his great-great-grandmother's family started Cardhu. He has judged the Scottish Whisky Awards for four years and has been through more than 90 distilleries. The unit he found had sat empty for about eighteen months, directly beside Holyrood Distillery, and the bar opened in July 2022.
Fourteen months later the trade gave it both of its whisky prizes on the same night. The Scottish Bar and Pub Awards, run by DRAM, named the bar Whisky Bar of the Year 2023 and named Hinds Whisky Guru of the Year at the same ceremony.1 Scottish Licensed Trade News then ran its own whisky category and gave it here in 20249 and again in 2025.10 That is the national title from both bodies that award one. No other bar in the city holds it.
The chef's half of the operation is still running. Tipsy Treats pairs chocolate bars against specific drams.6 Hinds explains the transfer plainly: a good nose, a wide flavor repertoire, and the ability to place a drinker whose palate was built somewhere else.2 His own palate had to be rebuilt after treatment, which he did with techniques he found online.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the Sunday Exploration Flight. Three drams from one distillery, GBP 10, chosen by Hinds.6 It is popular enough that people queue from about half past four to get in.2
- Order: a Thursday Distillery Discovery if you are in midweek. Five to nine drams for GBP 20, poured by the distillery's own senior staff, which Hinds insists on because
our crowd are very whisky orientated.
2 - Order: a chocolate pairing if you want to taste what a cook does with whisky.
- Avoid: treating this as dinner. There is no kitchen behind the pairings, so eat first or eat after.
What locals & experts say
- Felipe Schrieberg, Forbes (2025), puts it on his Edinburgh whisky map by name:
the excellent Tipsy Midgie, located close to Holyrood Distillery, regularly hosts tasting events.
3 - Colin Hinds on the pricing, to DRAM (2023):
Obviously, we could charge a lot more than that, but I want to make whisky as inclusive as possible. So, I try my absolute best to make sure that the overheads get taken care of and we look after people.
2 - Scottish Bar & Pub Awards 2023, Whisky Bar of the Year, winner, with the Whisky Guru of the Year going to Hinds at the same ceremony.1
- SLTN Awards, Whisky Bar of the Year, 2024 and 2025, winner both years, with Dornoch Castle Whisky Bar and Seumas' Bar at Sligachan highly commended in 2025.10
- The Scotsman's Rosalind Erskine (2025) files it under food and whisky pairings and flags the August extra: midnight whisky tastings with canapes, bookable online.4
- Forever Edinburgh, the city's tourist board (2025), repeats the bar's own claim that it
offers the largest selection of single malts in Edinburgh.
5 Nobody independent has counted the city's gantries against each other, so read that as the venue's line rather than a measured fact.
Good to know
- Which award, which year. The bar's own banner reads
Scotland's best whisky bar 2023, 2024 & 2025,
6 and that is three titles from two separate bodies. The 2023 one is the Scottish Bar & Pub Awards; 2024 and 2025 are the SLTN Awards. SLTN also ran a 2023 whisky category and gave it to The Pot Still in Glasgow, so the year alone does not identify the prize.12 - Getting there: Southside, on St Leonard's Hill, immediately beside Holyrood Distillery. Pair it with a distillery tour in either direction.4
- Booking: the bar takes walk-ins, but tastings, pairings and the August midnight sessions are booked ahead.4
- Timing: the Sunday flight draws a queue from about half past four. Thursday is the distillery night.
- Hours: neither the venue site nor any source cited here publishes them. Check before you go.
- Membership: there is an in-house club, the Tipsy Tasters, for people who want to go deeper.6
- Hygiene: Food Hygiene Information Scheme Pass, inspected 13 May 2026. Current, three months old at the time of writing.
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: "Named top whisky bar in Scotland 2023." He is right, and it took some digging to prove it. The body is the Scottish Bar & Pub Awards, not the SLTN Awards, which gave their 2023 whisky title to a Glasgow bar the same year.
Verdict
should-visit — Three national whisky titles in three consecutive years, from both of Scotland's licensed-trade bodies, and nobody else in Edinburgh has that. The Scottish Bar & Pub Awards gave it Whisky Bar of the Year in 2023 and gave its owner Whisky Guru of the Year at the same ceremony; SLTN gave it Whisky Bar of the Year in 2024 and again in 2025. Behind that sits a 3,500-bottle collection with over 800 open at once, which is a different and better number than a gantry count because open bottles are what you can actually drink. The buying is a chef's: Colin Hinds cooked for thirty years, trained under Cheong Liew, and talks about matching a dram to a drinker's flavor profile the way a cook talks about seasoning. That shows up in the room as chocolate-and-whisky pairings and as tasting nights priced to be taken, GBP 10 for three drams from one distillery on a Sunday and GBP 20 for five to nine on a Thursday poured by the distillery's own senior staff. It does not clear the top rung, and the other Edinburgh whisky bars decide that on consistency. The Scotch Malt Whisky Society sits at should-visit holding a global Whisky Magazine bar-of-the-year title and pouring liquid that exists nowhere else on earth; three national titles do not beat a world one, and this bar pours whisky anyone can buy. The Athletic Arms sits at the same rung with a cheaper pour and a Two star historic room. So this is the top of should-visit, not the bottom of must-visit. Go on a Sunday, get there before half past four, and let the man behind the bar pick.