Good Brothers

Wine Bars in Edinburgh's New Town: Where Good Brothers Sits

Edinburgh's wine bar scene has quietly matured over the past decade, splitting into two recognisable camps: the polished hotel bar with a wine list as an afterthought, and the specialist cellar format where the list is the entire point. Good Brothers, operating from a basement space below Kweilin Cantonese restaurant on Northumberland Street, belongs firmly to the second camp. The Georgian New Town provides a fitting backdrop — the neighbourhood's sandstone terraces and quiet residential streets have long supported a more considered, slower-paced style of drinking than the high-turnover venues along the Royal Mile or around George Street.

In a city where Bramble has defined the subterranean cocktail bar format and Panda & Sons occupies the more theatrical end of the drinks spectrum, Good Brothers positions itself around the bottle rather than the cocktail shaker. That is a deliberate niche, and one with a distinct enough identity to draw a regular crowd. The address — 34 Northumberland Street, EH3 6LS , sits in the quieter northern reaches of the New Town grid, which shapes the clientele as much as the wine list does.

The Daytime Experience: Shop Logic and Browsing Pace

The daytime character of Good Brothers reads closer to a specialist wine merchant than a drinking destination. The shop component allows visitors to browse the range , which spans stately Bordeaux and Burgundy through to less familiar producers , at their own pace, without the pressure of a timed reservation or a full dining room. This is a format that works particularly well in Edinburgh, where the lunch hour in the New Town draws professionals from the nearby financial and legal districts who want something more considered than a pub lunch but less formal than a restaurant booking.

The cellar setting gives even a daytime visit a different quality of light and ambient noise from the street-level bars nearby. Below ground, the temperature steadies and the external city noise drops away. For anyone pairing a glass with food brought from the Kweilin kitchen above , Cantonese and wine being a less obvious combination than it might initially seem, though the pairing logic around lighter reds and aromatic whites holds across both cuisines , the midday window offers the most unhurried version of the experience.

Across the UK's leading specialist wine venues, from L'Atelier Du Vin in Brighton to comparable cellar operations in London, daytime trade tends to skew toward the retail and educational side of the offering. Good Brothers fits that pattern: the shop element is not decorative but functional, and the range is wide enough to sustain genuine discovery across multiple visits.

Evening Service: When the Cellar Bar Takes Over

By evening, the dynamic shifts. The browsing pace gives way to something more settled, and the bar function becomes primary. Edinburgh's New Town evenings have a particular quality , quieter than the Old Town or the Grassmarket, with a clientele that tends toward the local and the repeat-visitor rather than tourists moving between landmarks. That suits the Good Brothers format well. A cellar bar rewards familiarity: knowing what to ask for, understanding which part of the list reflects current strengths, and feeling no obligation to work through the experience quickly.

The range from classic Bordeaux and Burgundy to less conventional bottles means the evening list can accommodate different approaches at the same table. Someone who wants a recognisable appellation alongside someone willing to follow a recommendation toward an unfamiliar producer , this is the kind of informal expertise that separates specialist operators from hotel bars with long wine lists. Nearby options like Aurora or the 24 Royal Terrace Hotel bar offer different registers of evening drinking in Edinburgh, but neither centres the wine selection with the same depth.

The evening version of Good Brothers also benefits from its unusual food pairing context. Sitting below a Cantonese kitchen creates a food-and-wine dynamic that most cellar bars in Britain do not offer. The aromatic profile of Cantonese cooking , the use of ginger, five-spice, fermented black beans , actually pairs with more of the wine world than conventional European wine-bar food does, and the combination gives Good Brothers an evening identity that is harder to replicate at more conventional wine-focused spots.

Placing Good Brothers in the Broader UK Wine Bar Context

Outside Edinburgh, the specialist cellar bar format appears in various British cities with different emphases. Schofield's in Manchester has built authority through cocktail precision rather than wine depth. The Merchant Hotel in Belfast works at the luxury end of the hotel bar with a substantial wine offering but within a much grander setting. The Horseshoe Bar in Glasgow represents a completely different Scottish drinking tradition. And further afield, 69 Colebrooke Row in London and Mojo in Leeds each occupy distinct urban niches built around quite different product philosophies.

Good Brothers operates in a smaller, more specific niche: the dual-function shop-and-bar below a restaurant, in a residential-leaning neighbourhood, with a list that takes both classic regions and lesser-known producers seriously. That combination is not common in Scottish cities, and it gives the venue a clearer identity than a wine bar that simply presents a long list without a curatorial point of view. Internationally, the format has parallels in operations like Bar Leather Apron in Honolulu, where the drinks selection is built around a specific philosophy rather than broad appeal.

Planning a Visit

Good Brothers is located at 34 Northumberland Street in the New Town, a walkable distance from Stockbridge and from the central Queen Street area. The New Town grid is easily navigated on foot from most central Edinburgh hotels, and the address is well-served by bus routes along Dundas Street. Given the absence of a published booking system in the available information, visiting during off-peak hours , early afternoon or pre-7pm on weekday evenings , is a practical approach for those who want to browse the shop at leisure before settling into the cellar bar. Weekend evenings in the New Town tend to fill earlier than the Old Town venues, so earlier arrival is advisable during peak periods.

For a broader picture of where Good Brothers sits within Edinburgh's drinking and dining options, the EP Club Edinburgh guide maps the full range of the city's restaurants, bars, and wine venues across neighbourhoods.