About Us
What's Master of Malt all about? Let us show you – from our humble origins in a garden shed to our all-important mission, bringing you unexpected delight as you explore and enjoy your drinks.
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Our Story
Our story starts in the early 80s with the birth of three young boys who would go on to become great friends, and eventually build Master of Malt together.
The years passed and the boys grew up together. But it wasn’t long before these blossoming adolescents shunned the world of commodity lager, and developed an interest in fine spirits – single malt whisky in particular. This was made much easier by virtue of Justin’s family having a close relationship with a whisky shop based in nearby Tunbridge Wells, Master of Malt.
Master of Malt has gone from a small bottle shop to one of the largest online drinks retailers.
Master of Malt originally started trading in 1985 as an independent bottler, fulfilling orders for single malt whiskies from the world’s best distilleries (something we still do, to award-winning effect) via mail order (we don’t do this anymore, thanks to the advent of the interwebs).
In the early 2000s Justin Petszaft (now the MD of our parent group, Atom Group), was looking for an excuse to develop some web design skills while studying a masters in theoretical physics. He found that opportunity in Master of Malt and developed our first ever website.
Over time he started running the day-to-day Master of Malt operations, and eventually acquired the business. The physical shop was closed and Master of Malt (affectionately known as MoM) was taken entirely online. Thanks to a relentless focus on improving our technology and service, it soon started to scale impressively.
These green shoots of potential were enough for Justin to make Master of Malt his mission, and so he set about rallying others to the cause.
Our four original founders,: Tom, Ben, Justin, and Joel (left to right).
Fast forward to 2009 and Master of Malt saw investment in two significant ways: people and technology.
Specifically, Justin coaxed two childhood friends, Tom McGuinness (current MD of Master of Malt) and Ben Ellefsen (currently a director of our parent, Atom Group) away from their blossoming careers to work in a tin shed, on a farm, in the middle of the Sussex countryside.
12 months later there was a complete relaunch of our website, completely coded from scratch. We couldn’t find a platform with the flexibility to allow us to do exactly what we wanted to do, so we built it ourselves.
It turns we knew what we were doing – that is, if the awards, testimonials, and our growth rate (we made it into the FastTrack 100 in 2018!) are anything to go by.
In 2018 we were excited to announce a partnership with ZX Ventures. This enabled us to increase our investment in people and technology. To this day Master of Malt remains founder-led, full of dedicated and passionate people, and more hopeful than ever about the future.
2025: We are now, once again, 100% founder-owned. That means the Atom Group and all that makes it up – Master of Malt, Master of Malt Trade, Maverick Drinks, and Atom Brands – is fully independent and no longer part of AB InBev’s ZX Ventures.
We can now focus on growing a beautiful ecosystem comprising every link in the premium spirits value chain. We are once again the champions of our destiny. The master of our own malts. We will continue to do what we do best: put great drinks into the hands of the consumer. More here.
The epic Atom summer party in full swing!
What's our mission?
What are our values?
But a little more about what we're trying to do here at Master of Malt.
We’re a group of dedicated individuals trying to bring ever more delightful drinks experiences to ever more people.
We wanted Master of Malt to be a role model for what ‘good’ looked like in online retail. We were fed up of being the fed-up customers of other businesses which seemed to think that shitty experiences were acceptable, and we wanted to show them how wrong-minded they were by doing it right ourselves.
The good news is we’re extremely well-placed to do this. The delightful products we conceive and manufacture to the delightful interfaces (human and tech) which our customers interact with, along with our can-do customer experience philosophy, and our 'last mile' delivery experience, unexpected delight is the name of our game.
Sure, we do other stuff at the same time, such as try to make some money—but it’s not the highlight of our day.
This is why we’re proud (but not surprised) to boast that 94% of our ratings on Trustpilot are 5*, which makes us 'Excellent'. Their words, not ours.
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