Mine's a pint: The Oxford Bar

Where would literature be without the pub? Chaucer’s pilgrims set off for Canterbury from a London tavern. Shakespeare had Falstaff declare that “thin drink doth overcool their blood” when complaining of a “sober-blooded boy” who “drinks no wine”. Writers around the world have found cause to hail the ale, or lament its deleterious effects.

So arrival in Edinburgh, where the main station is named after a novel and the biggest monument in town celebrates Sir Walter Scott, instantly has the erudite drinker contemplating combinations of pints and prose. Forsake the tourist trade that grows around Harry Potter and eschew the sickly-sweet butterscotch beer foisted on unsuspecting Hogwarts fans. Tread warily around he Leith of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting, for fear of tumbling into the worst toilet in Scotland. Head, instead, for the Oxford Bar, favoured watering hole of Ian Rankin’s DI Rebus.

Rebus, a cussed, curmudgeonly old-school cop, married to the job and self-medicating by the dram, is nobody’s idea of a tourist attraction. Sure, the novels are a great read; I’m no frequenter of the ‘Crime’ section of the library, but I’ll make an exception for Rankin’s atmospheric and tightly plotted procedurals. But you suspect Rankin and Rebus alike would give short shrift to the idea of a tourist trail, perhaps rounded off with a themed cocktail in the bar immortalized in the stories.

So, happily, visitors experience a working Edinburgh pub. Yes, there’s a discreet corner dedicated to its literary heritage. But on an average evening, certainly in the dark days of February, the background noise is old pals enjoying a convivial beer rather than camera-happy experience hunters looking for that Insta moment. Over the stand-up bar, it’s footie chat and the on-going demise of Manchester United. Step to the lounge, known here as the back room, and find a seat. You’ll likely hear your neighbours debating the merits of different Spanish holiday destinations or discussing the aches and pains of the retirement years. New town bar, old man’s boozer? Perhaps. But it’s unpretentious, unfussy and not unimaginable as the second home of a troubled detective.

If there’s an oddity, it has little to do with crime writing. Not just a bar, the Oxford is also an art gallery. The back room was decorated with scenes painted by Edinburgh-based artist Steve Megson. Some even bore the triumphant red dot of a successful sale, despite commanding some hefty prices. The reinvention of the pub trade suggests we’re likely to see more of this: sticking to the old formula seems ever less reliable; opening the doors for more than TV sport and industrial quantities of bog-standard lager offers a way forward for the licensed trade.

Bog-standard lager doesn’t feature too prominently behind the bar, either, with a beer selection that leans heavily on local indie brewers. In a city dominated by the mass-produced Tenants Lager and Belhaven ale – neither of them bad, but neither exciting either – it’s good to see variety. Better still, variety isn’t swamped by the imaginative but expensive Vault City range of beer that doesn’t taste of hops: good for a one-off, but hardly session material.

Instead, it was a Jack Back IPA from Stewart Brewing down in Loanhead – local beer, local pub, just how it should be. This one bills itself as a session IPA, and lives up to that

Meanwhile, both Scottish tradition and a nod to Rebus himself demand a tot of whisky. The selection doesn’t disappoint, and a shot of Talisker – long a personal favourite – hits the spot perfectly. Naturally, nothing is quite perfect: we’re close enough to central Edinburgh to push the prices into the stratosphere. But, that aside, it would be no fiction to rate this place as an ideal local.

Thanks for reading. This is planned as the first in an intermittent series of pub tales, part of a celebration of a great British tradition (and, on occasion, its cousins overseas).