Stenson was born in
Colville, Washington, and grew up in the Seattle suburb of
Kirkland. After dropping out of
Shoreline Community College, 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
The New York Times called "the sickly sweet [cocktail] concoctions 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
Disneyland due to the amount of attention he attracted; he explained in a 2020 interview that he "only ever saw [himself] as 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. ==Personal life and death==