Murray Russell Stenson (July 29, 1949 – September 22, 2023) was an American bartender in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

, Washington. Stenson was an instrumental figure in the cocktail renaissance of the early 21st century, most notably behind the bar at the Zig Zag Café where he reintroduced the pre-

Prohibition Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic ...

cocktail The Last Word. In 2010, Stenson was named "Best Bartender in America" by Tales of the Cocktail.

Life and career

Stenson was born in

Colville, Washington Colville is a city in Stevens County, Washington, United States. The population was 4,673 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Stevens County. History John Work, an agent for The Hudson's Bay Company, established Fort Colvile near the ...

, and grew up in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland. After dropping out of

Shoreline Community College Shoreline Community College is a public community college in Shoreline, Washington. It is located in a residential area east of Shoreview Park. The college contains over 80 acres and continuously serves 12,000 full- and part-time students. It o ...

, he worked a series of service jobs before being hired as a bartender at a Seattle restaurant called Benjamin's. He was dissatisfied with what ''

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'' called "the sickly sweet ocktailconcoctions of the 1970s", and began reforming the bar's drink offerings with new ingredients and styles. Stenson later worked at Il Bistro and the Zig Zag Cafe, where his reputation grew among cocktail enthusiasts from the 1990s onward, and lifted the profiles of each establishment. He left the Zig Zag Cafe in 2011, unfavorably comparing it to

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due to the amount of attention he attracted; he explained in a 2020 interview that he "only ever saw imselfas a bartender" and disliked the fame. He worked for short stints at a variety of establishments thereafter, before retiring due to poor health and the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

Personal life and death

Stenson was married to Cynthia Carson from 1980 until divorcing in 1982, and to Antonia Busto from 1982 until divorcing in 1984. He had two children. Stenson died from complications of Guillain–Barré syndrome at his home in Seattle on September 22, 2023, at the age of 74.

References

1949 births 2023 deaths American bartenders People from Kirkland, Washington People from Seattle {{bartending-stub