SLTN Award winner is creating a buzz in the Scottish capital
You could say that Colin Hinds, owner of SLTN’s reigning Whisky Bar of the Year, The Tipsy Midgie, has whisky in his blood.
Not only can the veteran chef, who opened The Tipsy Midgie on Edinburgh’s St Leonard’s Hill in 2022, trace his family tree to Helen Cumming, the founder of Cardhu Distillery but, as he was growing up, several family members were employed in the industry.
“Growing up, my Dad was from the southside of Glasgow and my mum was from Alexandria,” he told SLTN.
“Obviously there was so many whisky bonds in Alexandria and Dumbarton.
“When I was growing up almost everybody was employed either by Polaroid or in all the bonds.
“When I was growing up, everyone was employed by Polaroid or whisky bonds.”
“So I had family members and cousins and extended family working in the bonds. They would always be having whisky and so you learned a little about it. They all got allocations, presumably to stop them pinching the whisky.
“I don’t know if that helped or hindered it.”
While whisky would go on to become one of Colin’s most important passions, it was cooking that he fell in love with first.
Again, it was a passion that ignited in childhood.
He explained: “I wasn’t one of these guys that fell into cooking. It was a passion of mine when I was a kid. I suppose it kind of started when I was growing up. My mum was particularly ill. She was bed-bound. She had chronic ME so I was what you would call a child carer. I used to have to cook for the family. So I was always cooking – even when I was 10, 11, 12 years old.”
Childhood cooking led to training at the Glasgow College of Food Technology, followed by stints in restaurants and hotels around Glasgow.
His education also extended to learning on his own time and, this being a pre-YouTube era, he devoured cookbooks, having around 400 by the time he moved to Australia to work in kitchens there.
That adventure led to further chef positions in Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, France and London before Colin made the jump to cruise ships, working in the Caribbean for Disney.
Returning to Scotland more than a decade ago, he opened restaurants The Kilted Lobster and Rib Aye, the former later featuring whisky ‘pop-up’ The Whisky Forager, which saw Colin pair rare and unusual whiskies with a six-course tasting menu.
However, when a health diagnosis made full-time cheffing unrealistic, Colin decided to pivot and embrace his other big passion by opening a specialist whisky bar.
The St Leonard’s Hill unit was perfect.
“We’re right next to the police station, we’re right next to a whisky distillery (Holyrood Distillery is only 100 feet away). This could be the perfect venn diagram of security and whisky tourism.”
With more than 1200 bottles open, The Tipsy Midgie isn’t short of quality drams to offer its clientele, but it’s not just about the numbers.
Colin said the secret to the range is having ‘a nice mixture of heritage bottlings, affordable bottlings, luxury bottlings, unicorn bottlings’.
“Basically having things that people maybe can’t get themselves,” he said.
“There’s no point in going to a whisky bar and drinking whisky that you can buy in the supermarket, in my opinion.”
In addition to the extensive whisky list (which includes sections on international whiskies, blends and single grains as well as single malts), the bar’s whisky menus include a list dedicated to drams and distilleries that are ‘old, rare and silent’, a specialist – and regularly changing – hauf and hauf list, a whisky flight menu, ‘Tipsy Treats’ selection, which pairs drams with chocolate bars and other sweets, and the popular ‘Alpha & Omega’ menu, which pairs a whisky with the original contents of the cask it was matured in (for example, Madeira wine or Amontillado sherry).
A five-strong cocktail menu offers customers a selection of whisky-based drinks.
On top of that, The Tipsy Midgie runs regular events that include tastings (often hosted by luminaries including distillers or brand ambassadors) and food pairings, as well as its own recently-launched whisky club, Tipsy Tasters.
“I could stand and talk all day about whisky, but I think it’s far more interesting to hear from the master blender, the distillery manager or the global brand ambassador; someone who actually knows what the inside of the distillery looks like,” said Colin.
“For me, there’d be nothing worse than going into a bar and just selling whisky.”
Other tastings can take unorthodox formats.
For example, when SLTN spoke to Colin, The Tipsy Midgie was preparing to host an Edinburgh Derby-themed tasting, that would see two independent bottlers bringing three drams each to the bar. Each bottler would champion one of the Edinburgh teams, with attendees blind-tasting each whisky and asked to pick their favourites.
Keeping things interesting is important to Colin, who said: “For me, there’d be nothing worse than going into a bar every day and basically just selling whisky. I’m sure other people love that, but I want to be as creative as possible and give people the chance to experience whisky in different ways.”
And soon enough that won’t just apply to whisky fans in the capital.
When SLTN spoke to Colin in June he was finalising a deal to take on a unit in Campbeltown, which is in the middle of a whisky resurgence.
The town’s three existing distilleries are due to be joined by several more in the coming years, and Colin reckoned the resulting boost to whisky tourism will help Tipsy Midgie Wee Toun to become a fixture in the former whisky capital.
The Campbeltown bar should be up and running by spring 2026.
“We’re going to absolutely dominate Campbeltown,” said Colin, with his tongue partially – but not entirely – in his cheek.
“It’ll be Colintown by the time I’m finished.”
