Monkey Shoulder Crashes the Beach and Builds the Most Intimate Stage at Wildeburg

You can always count on Wildeburg to throw curveballs, wild art, secret stages, parties in the forest that feel like fever dreams. But no one saw this one coming: a whisky brand quietly setting up the most intimate dance floor of the summer right on the sand.

Monkey Shoulder didn’t just sponsor a stage. They built a house. Literally, on the Vuurtorenstrand, venue that anchors both Wilde Weide and Wildeburg, they dropped a low-slung, orange-lit structure that blurred the line between listening bar, secret club, and private beach shack. Outside, it melted into the dunes. Inside, it felt like stepping into a dream curated by someone who’s been collecting records and design inspiration for years.

At a time when stages are growing bigger, louder, and more LED-soaked, Monkey Shoulder zagged. The booth? Hidden. The capacity: 70, max. The message? Simple: this isn’t about the DJ, it’s about the energy. You could walk in and not know who was playing, and that was the point. No spectacle, just a crowd, a room, and music doing what it does best: connecting us.

The surrounding area was filled with another 200 people soaking in the sun, enjoying the hot tubs, and dancing on the oversized chessboard-turned-dance floor. It was playful, lush, and just weird enough to work. This wasn’t just a brand activation; it was a proper stage, with the right heads behind the decks.

Each weekend brought a new host. Wilde Weide was handled by RRFM, the radio arm of Amsterdam’s Radio Radio, who came through with elegant, leftfield curation; Lola Edo,

, and the kind of sets that you want to Shazam but also keep secret. The vibe was high-end chill; music for heads, not algorithms.

Then SlapFunk took over for Wildeburg, and everything shifted gears. DJ Chuckie brought fire. Enzo Siragusa and Samuel Deep laid down groove-heavy bombs like they were back in the basement. It was raw, percussive, and ridiculously tight; the kind of session where you lose all sense of time.

Of course, it wouldn’t be Monkey Shoulder without drinks that matched the vibe. The Monkey Sour (with Szechuan honey), Monkey Colada (tiki-twisted), and the Ginger Monkey (available across the site) were in constant rotation. But somehow, sipping a cocktail inside a whisky-branded beach bunker while the bass rolls in? It just hit different.

“I can’t wait to welcome people into the world of Monkey Shoulder,” said brand manager Sam van der Vliet, grinning like someone who knows they’ve pulled it off.

“This is a collaboration I dreamed of three years ago, and now that dream is finally coming true.”

He’s not wrong. In a summer packed with mega-stages and lineups that blur together, Monkey Shoulder gave us something smaller, stranger, and much more memorable. A reminder that sometimes, all you need is a house, a stack of records, and a crowd ready to party.