This article is part of The Spill Awards 2025, covering the best in spirits, cocktails, bartenders and drinks culture. Find all of the stories here.
“It feels like your best friends built a clubhouse for you,” says Mary Allison Wright, the co-owner of Yacht Club in Denver, Colorado. “One of our best friends who’s our designer said this about the bar, and it’s the highest compliment.”
It’s a sentiment I agree with 100%.
I first experienced Yacht Club when they popped up at Grand Army Bar during Bar Convent Brooklyn last summer. I admit I didn’t really know anything about them going in, but I certainly left deeply involved. Wright embraced me as if we’d been friends forever and made sure I left with a Yacht Club-branded bolo tie and mini rubber chickens, the latter of which still live on my windowsill to this day.
“One day, one of our bartenders, Monica, ordered this $20 box of random stuff and in it was a rubber chicken,” Wright says. “Our ticket printer doesn’t make a noise, so somehow it was quickly decided that we would squeeze this rubber chicken when a ticket printed so the bartenders could hear it. The chicken’s name is Ticken and has become part of Yacht Club lore and is basically a member of the staff.”
When I was on the phone chatting with Wright and co-owner McLain Hedges a couple weeks ago, a loud squeaking started coming through the receiver. “I apologize for the squeaking,” Wright says. “Our puppy is on one right now. She’s a terror in the morning.”
Very honestly, I say, “When the squeaking first started, for a split second I thought you were squeaking one of the chickens. And then I was like, no, that’s a dog.”
“We’ve actually stopped communicating in words around here,” Hedges says after they both laugh at my dumbass comment. “This is the first conversation we’ve had with a real human.”
I think that’s what I love most about the Yacht Club vibe. Nothing is too serious, and it all goes back to why we go out in the first place — to have fun. “That’s truly what we want it to feel like,” Wright says. “You walk through the door and you’re immediately welcome, no matter who you are, what you’re in the mood for.”
Go West, Young Human
In November 2024, I finally made it to Yacht Club in Denver. I love a theme, so I came fully equipped with my YC bolo tie and Lucchese boots. It’s a vibe that’s not only very Colorado, but also a nod to Hedges and Wright’s background. “Denver’s very Western, but McClain and I are also from Tennessee and love outlaw country and old country,” Wright says. “It exists in so many different cultures and in different ways. It’s a touch of that rebellious lifestyle. It’s a little bit honky-tonk, a little bit rock and roll.”
The first thing I noticed as our party sidled up to the bar was that people were moving. In-between the bar stools and seats lining the perimeter, there’s space for a small dance floor of sorts, which patrons were wholeheartedly using. Music is a part of the fabric of Yacht Club, as Wright and Hedges were band promoters in Atlanta before they got into the restaurant scene there. But when it came time to open their own place, the west — as it has done for centuries — beckoned.
“Denver felt like it was on the cusp of something, like something was about to pop off,” Wright says. “We felt like we could really be a part of something, perhaps its growth and direction. So we decided to give it a go. We packed all of our stuff, including our cat, in a U-Haul and drove across the country in February, which is psychotic. And we thought if we hated it, we would just go back home. And we’ve been here for 13 years.”
Wine Not: A Philosophy
As soon as we sat down at the bar, we were presented with mini coupes of sparkling wine, a welcome drink to whet the palate. In any cocktail bar, my eye goes immediately to, well, the cocktails. But Yacht Club puts just as much effort into their wine program, championing regions they personally love and smaller producers trying interesting things. And it ties back to the cocktail program in more than one way.
“Wine is a massively important part of the spirits industry,” Hedges says. “So we have an opportunity to loop it in full circle. If we’re using a Cognac, we might ask, ‘What wines are in that region? What grape is this Cognac made from?’ And then can we access wines from that area and tell a little bit about how the Cognac ended up where it is. It kind of helps us build on things.”
Wine helps them build the cocktail recipes, too. As I was perusing the latest menu, I realized every single drink contains some sort of wine or fortified wine. At first it was a coincidence, but it’s become intentional during R&D.
“When we opened Yacht Club 1.0, we had a wine shop like 10 feet from it in the Source Hotel,” Wright says. “So we were able to play with a lot of these fortified and table wines. What they do is add texture and acid, structure and tannins. They can soften, they can lower ABV. Also, it allows us to open a bottle, share it with people, enjoy it and use it in a sustainable way — put it into a cocktail, give it a second life, not watch it die.”
Remarkable Cocktails That Are Far From Precious
The cocktails at Yacht Club are nothing short of extraordinary. Take the It Ain’t All Flowers, a personal favorite made with mezcal, sauvignon blanc, tomato, saffron and salty lime. Or the Draped Up, a wild, heavily-carbonated French 75 variation mixed with elderflower-infused, crème fraîche fat-washed vodka that’s served with potato-skin salt and a caviar bump. But you can also grab an Old No. 7-11 (a Jack and Coke and a hot dog) for $9.
Oh, the hot dogs! They have a whole menu of them, from a plain frank to the Lorraine, which is dressed up in cheeseball spread, celery remoulade, pickled peppers and pecans. Yes, it’s an adventurous one, just like Yacht Club’s cocktails. But going back to that clubhouse feel, it’s the type of place where you’re not afraid to exit your comfort zone because you know it’s really not that serious.
“I’m always surprised by people’s willingness to take a different adventure than maybe they typically would,” Hedges says. “Maybe that’s, at least partly, the vibe of Yacht Club that breaks down a couple of those barriers people put up.”
By the end of the evening, my whole party was decked out in bolo ties and fully drinking the Kool-Aid — figuratively and literally, as there’s always a “Kool-Aid du jour” on the menu at Yacht Club.
I came back to New York gushing about the bar to anyone who’d listen, wishing it was my local instead of halfway across the country. But a beautiful city like Denver deserves to have the best bar in America, and it’ll soon have a new restaurant helmed by Hedges and Wright.
“It’s called Le Rougarou,” Wright says. “The name is cheeky French [“rougarou” comes from the French words loup garou, which means werewolf], and I would say shapeshifting gothic Southern is how to think about the food, for lack of a better term right now.”
As for Yacht Club, what can you do with a bar that’s already pretty perfect? Make changes when you need to, but also allow it to just be.
“We keep an eye open, keep an ear open, keep communication out there,” Hedges says. “As things feel like they need to be adjusted, we make those adjustments. Yacht Club itself has become its own identity and its own living and breathing creature. We don’t like to get in its way too much.”
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