Yacht rock has never really been about yachts. Most people who love it will likely never even set foot on one, and that’s sort of the point. Yacht rock is a state of mind more than it is a music genre: a warm breeze, a sunset that won’t quit, a drink sweating in your hand, and absolutely nowhere to be. The opening bars of Christopher Cross’ “Sailing” or the Doobie Brothers’ “What a Fool Believes” are all it takes to get there.

Lately, a lot more people have been chasing that feeling and it has never been easier to find. In 2024, HBO’s Yacht Rock: A DOCKumentary put Kenny Loggins Christopher Cross, and Michael McDonald alongside younger devotees like Questlove, Thundercat, and Mac DeMarco. Sirius XM now runs a 24/7 Yacht Rock Radio channel, and earlier this year, stations like Omaha’s Yacht Rock 1180 and Maryland’s 94.3 Dockside Radio flipped to the format full-time. Closer to home, Allianz Field in St. Paul booked an AM Gold Yacht Rock night as part of its inaugural Great Lawn Summer Concert Series. This past summer, Christopher Cross and Toto played to a packed crowd at the new Mystic Lake Amphitheater, while the Doobie Brothers (with Michael McDonald back on vocals) played the same stage the next night. When the news cycle is anything but smooth, a little smoothness goes a long way.

Best of all, yacht rock is a state of mind that travels near without having to go far. You don’t need open water or a captain’s hat. A Minnesota November, with the lakes going gray and the pontoons long in storage, works just fine.

Now, there’s a new cocktail book dedicated to helping you get there. Yacht Rock Cocktails (Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed Press), from bartender and author Chris Vola, pairs the genre’s smoothest hits with drinks built to match. It hits shelves on Nov. 24, just in time for the holiday shopping season.

Yacht Rock Cocktails

Vola knows his way around a themed cocktail book. He’s the author of 11 books, including the IACP award-winning The Cocktail Atlas: Around the World in 200+ Drinks and Pour One Out, which pairs 65 of television’s most dearly departed characters with cocktails that suit their personality. Vola has real bar credentials too. He served as head bartender at New York’s Little Branch, where he trained under the late cocktail pioneer Sasha Petraske.

Yacht Rock Cocktails applies that same formula to the smoothest sounds of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. The 144-page hardcover book pairs 50 yacht rock hits with drinks, and each recipe comes with a helping of history and trivia about the song behind it. Christopher Cross’ “Sailing” gets a double-rum Tradewinds. Kenny Loggins’ “This Is It” gets a simple Gin & It, which might be the most efficient pun in the whole book. Micheal McDonald’s “I Keep Forgettin’” is appropriately paired with the booze-forward Last Memory

It’s written for both kinds of yacht rock fans: the lifers who can name every session player on Aja, and the newer converts who just know this stuff sounds great with a drink in hand. Vola covers the lore either way, and the book, of course, closes with a playlist of all 50 songs.

But this isn’t a cocktail book made just to sit pretty on a coffee table or collect dust on a bookshelf. Between the song histories, the trivia, and Vola’s wit, it’s a book you’ll actually want to read, ideally with one of its drinks within reach.

The Cocktails

To put the book to the test, I chose six drinks that Vola paired with some of my favorite yacht rock tracks and invited two of my yacht rockiest friends over to try them out while spinning Steely Dan, Christopher Cross, and Doobie Brothers records. All six were spectacular.

We opened with the Starlet, a light and fragrant little number that leans on blanco tequila, St. Germain, and a Champagne float to get the job done. Paired with Steely Dan’s “Peg,” it was the perfect drink to kick off the night and was very easy to make. I did initially forget the Champagne float, and the drink was still great. When I added the float a few sips in, it provided the Hollywood ending that Peg deserved — though I found Cava to be a perfectly suitable, more budget-friendly alternative to Champagne.

Next up was the Rose Sour, paired with Toto’s “Rosanna,” and it was the undisputed hit of the night. It’s essentially a pisco sour with strawberry, and it’s dangerously easy to go back for seconds — which we did. Oddly, it was much harder to make the second time around. I have theories as to why, and most of them involve how much we enjoyed the first round.

The Southern Hemisphere, paired with Little River Band’s “Reminiscing,” plays like a daiquiri with pisco in place of rum. It combines pisco and cachaça with lime juice and simple syrup into a very well-balanced drink that’s tart, slightly sweet, and subtly boozy without being overpowering. Hailing from Australia, Little River Band stray pretty significantly from the geographic limitations of what is technically considered yacht rock. According to the YouTube creators who coined the term, yacht rock only applies to artists from Los Angeles. Everything else is just “sparkling soft rock.”

To accompany Christopher Cross’ LSD-inspired hit “Ride Like the Wind,” Vola puts his (or rather Cross’) spin on my personal favorite cocktail with Christopher’s Carajillo. Calling for equal parts tequila, coffee liqueur, and Licor 43, this version couldn’t be easier to make. The recipe in the book calls for garnishing with a sprinkle of cinnamon, but I found that lightly torching a whole cinnamon stick and stirring the drink with it brought a fragrant, aromatic note to the party. It’s the perfect drink to sip while debating your favorite Michael McDonald background vocal performance.

The night’s final two cocktails were both strong finishers. The Ambrosia Cocktail, fittingly paired with Ambrosia’s “Biggest Part of Me,” combines cognac, calvados, and Cointreau with lemon juice and a champagne float. Long before its “salad” association, ambrosia was said to be the food of the gods. The Ambrosia Cocktail would fit right in on that divine dining table. It’s fruity, but not too sweet, and is the perfect drink for making a gloomy fall day feel like the last gasp of summer.

We closed the night out with the aforementioned Last Memory alongside Michael McDonald’s “I Keep Forgettin' (Every Time You're Near).” It’s an aptly named nightcap. Think of it as a loose riff on an old fashioned with tons of botanical notes from the addition of Fernet and Bénédictine. It was by far the strongest drink of the night, but it wasn’t quite strong enough to keep us from making a second round of Rose Sours and Christopher’s Carajillos.

The Yacht Rock

Here’s where the book earns its spot beyond the bar cart. At the end of Yacht Rock Cocktails, is a QR code that takes readers to a YouTube playlist of all 50 songs featured in the book. Spend an evening pairing these songs with their drinks, and you start to notice just how small and tightly knit the yacht rock world was. Michael McDonald alone turned up all over our night’s playlist. He sings backup on “Peg” — actually four of him sing four-part harmonizing backups on “Peg.” He harmonizes with Cross on “Ride Like the Wind,” and finally takes the lead on his solo debut “I Keep Forgettin’,” which hip-hop fans know from its sample in Nate Dogg and Warren G’s “Regulate.”

That’s the real appeal of this book. Sure, Yacht Rock Cocktails is a recipe book. But it’s also an excuse. It gives you a reason to get some friends together, spin some records, and sip something great while arguing about whether or not Hall & Oates count as yacht rock (they don’t!). The playlist at the back takes care of the soundtrack. All you have to do is mix.

That makes it an easy holiday gift for the yacht rock lover, the home cocktail lover, or the music trivia savant in your life. Odds are, they’re probably all the same person. Wrap it up with a bottle of pisco, and you’ve got a party in a box.

Yacht Rock Cocktails by Chris Vola is out Tuesday, November 24, from Ten Speed Press/Clarkson Potter. Hardcover, 144 pages, $24.