Paul Clarke of Cocktail Chronicles shared the news on Friday that local bartending icon Murray Stenson has passed away.

It’s easy to toss words like “icon” and “legend” around when someone dies. But Stenson qualifies, handily. No other one person did more to stake Seattle’s role in the craft cocktail renaissance of the early 2000s.

Officially, Stenson’s greatest contribution is probably his re-discovery of the Last Word, the chartreuse-tinged drink that became a symbol of the revival of classic cocktails across America, and especially in Seattle. But I’ll remember him more for being a shining example of what a good bartender should be: Great with cocktails, yes, but also a warm presence who made customers feel at ease, whether alone or in a group, whether you were craving connection or companionable silence. The craft cocktail landscape can be an intimidating one, but Murray always remembered your drink (or helped you find a great one), even if you weren't one of the cool kids. 

That’s probably why publications like this one used to update the populace on Stenson’s whereabouts the way the NORAD tracker keeps tabs on Santa Claus every Christmas Eve. Come to think of it, Stenson generated Santa-level amounts of joy, albeit to people of legal drinking age. He was a bartender’s bartender. Long before Danny Meyer was writing books about radical hospitality, Stenson was pulling off surprise feats, like running down the street to buy a bottle of bubbles if you sat at his bar and happened to mention it was your anniversary.

Stenson built a following at Il Bistro in Pike Place Market. But when new owners took over Zig Zag Cafe in 2002, he ended up moving to this spot on the Pike Hillclimb. As Keith Waldbauer of the Doctor’s Office told me for a story a few years back, “If you went to Zig Zag in those early days, you would have seen the entire bar top ringed by bartenders with notebooks” as guys like him studied and learned from Murray Stenson.

Back then, the country had maybe a dozen true craft cocktail bars—something that’s bonkers to contemplate today. Stenson told me a while back that he found the recipe for the Last Word in one of his many old cocktail books. He acknowledged that it was an odd sounding drink: “On paper it just sounds like it’s not going to work. At that time there weren’t that many bars that carried green chartreuse and almost nobody carried maraschino. These were exotic ingredients that most people didn’t know anything about.” Also, a lot of people weren’t into gin back when the Last Word came on Zig Zag’s menu in 2003.

In 2010, Stenson was named Best Bartender in America at Tales of the Cocktail, a spirits-industry awards that resembles the James Beard Awards crossed with the Oscars…crossed with a lot of great drinks. The buzz got a little crazy from there.

In 2011, Stenson left Zig Zag. He moved around with some regularity after that. It always seemed to me he was just looking for a low key place to do what he did best—tend bar. Then word would get out, people would come gawk at it and his presence would become a Whole Thing. So he'd move on, and the cycle began anew.

Weirdly the best Murray Stenson experience I can remember is from his short tenure at Kaname Izakaya, a spot in Japantown (now Itsumono). It was about the last place you’d expect to find him; it was chill and that in itself was great. My other major Murray memory was the lovely note he mailed me after an interview. To reiterate: a hand-written note. Social media is full of stories of gracious Murray gestures like this: like  calling a bar to congratulate the owners for landing in the Difford’s Cocktail Guide. He truly helped build community among the city’s cocktail practitioners.

Stenson hasn’t been behind the bar (that I know of) since the pandemic, but he kept working long after you’d expect a guy like that to reasonably hang it up and relax. According to the Seattle Times, he was 74. Writer Brad Thomas Parsons has a nice collection of Murray profiles and stories going over on his Substack.

Today, if you visit one of Seattle’s scores of great cocktail bars, it's in part thanks to Murray Stenson. When the person making your drink gets it just right and makes you feel taken care of, for at least that one hour, well, you can thank Murray for that too. But best to just order a Last Word, wherever you might be, and toast the guy who dusted off this recipe from an old book and brought it back to life, and, in the process, put Seattle on the national cocktail stage. Here's to you, Murray.