Eleven Winery

About Us

Eleven is the result, ultimately, of an epiphany.

Our founder and winemaker, Matt Albee, having hung up his racing bike after chasing the dream of professional suffering on two wheels around the globe, started looking around for what to do next. Having left graduate school in physics years earlier to pursue bicycle racing while his legs were still young, he considered going back to school, but the slow pace of scientific research is enough to lull just about anyone to sleep, which is what it did to him one morning as he dozed over a neuropsychology text in the Fall of 1999. In that half-awake state where dreams and reality mingle and chat like guests at a party, the epiphany struck, as though everyone at the party stopped talking all at once except for a single voice that said clearly "you should be a winemaker." Such a voice is not wisely ignored, so Matt set about finding a way to try winemaking. Matt and his wife Sarah were living in the San Francisco Bay area, where they had spent many weekends touring and tasting at wineries, so it seemed like giving winemaking a try might be feasible without having to go too far. Matt had met the winemaker at Page Mill Winery, a small winery located near where he was living in Menlo Park, California. It was September, and his offer to help Dane Stark with harvest was met with an obvious "of course!" Within a few days he found himself standing atop the crush stand in the cool morning air, dumping 30-pound boxes of grapes into the crusher. Then and there, he knew that his destiny was sealed. He started going to the winery every morning before work, and after a few days Dane suggested that he make a barrel of wine of his own, "and do it now,” he said, “because if you wait even a few weeks, you'll have to wait until next year." Matt found some grapes for sale and made a barrel of chardonnay that year, and continued helping out at the winery after harvest ended. Over the next three years, Dane, generous to a fault with his time, space, and equipment, taught Matt how to make great wine, and Matt spent as much time as possible working in the cellar. After three years, Matt's ambitions outgrew the limited extra space at Page Mill. He and Sarah searched for a place to put down roots in California, but ultimately decided to return to the Pacific Northwest, where they had both grown up. At the time the wine scene in Washington was just getting going, with a mere 250 wineries in the entire state. Matt and Sarah settled on Bainbridge Island for its community and natural beauty more than as a sensible place to start a winery (because it wasn't). They bought a fixer-upper house, fixed it up, refinanced it, and used the extra money to convert the large garage into a tiny winery. The first grapes were crushed in 2003, and the first whites were released in 2004. In 2011, the winery was relocated to larger space just a short distance from the original location, still on Bainbridge Island.