McLain Hedges

Coming Up

Service and bartending form the base of McLain Hedges’s work, with Chattanooga, TN, as the starting point and Denver as the place where that training was put into practice. The line reads less like a dramatic ascent than a discipline built on repetition: attention to the room, care in the pour, and a steady hand in hospitality. A beverage-director chapter at Morin sits in that same frame, before Yacht Club brought together cocktails, wine, affordability, food, music, and welcome. Early work at Mizuna in Denver put wine and bar service in the same register. As a sommelier and bartender, McLain Hedges built the habits that would define his approach: listening closely, moving with the room, and keeping precision from turning brittle. That mix of wine knowledge and bartending became a working foundation, useful because it could hold both exactness and ease.

Where They Are Now

Ownership and beverage direction meet in the role McLain Hedges holds at Yacht Club in Denver. As co-owner and beverage/creative director, he helps determine not just what gets poured, but how the bar speaks through pacing, atmosphere, and the shape of service. The job extends past the list; it includes the room’s tempo, the tone of the night, and the way hospitality lands beyond the glass. Yacht Club is built as a mixed register bar: part nerdy cocktail bar, part natural wine bar, and part sh*tty dive bar. Affordable cocktails, late night bites, and live music every Sunday place it in open reach rather than behind a gate. In that structure, the work is not about choosing between seriousness and ease; it is about keeping both in the same house without forcing the room to choose. The bar’s stated philosophy is direct: “Instead of being an exclusive club, we're more like an all-inclusive version of that.” For a room called Yacht Club, the line flips the expectation of membership into something wider and less guarded. The premise is simple enough to run a bar on: welcome can be designed with the same care as a drink.

Signature

McLain's signature cocktails include Watermelon Le Crawl, Lipton Cup, and Ballin' is a Habit.

In Their Words “It's been an honor to put a lot of time and effort and love into the community around us and the city itself.” “Instead of being an exclusive club, we're more like an all-inclusive version of that.”

Honors

McLain's honors include Nominated for Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service by the James Beard Foundation Awards (2026).