wine with a purpose
A WINERY’S MISSION TO GIVE BACK
Words by Alorie Gilbert Photo by Jefté Sanchez
Before he was a winemaker Matt Albee cycled competitively. The name Eleven comes from the number of teeth on the smallest cog of a road bike’s rear cluster—the one racers use to go all out.
Matt Albee has just returned from Eastern Washington and the vineyards that supply grapes to Eleven Winery. “I did something I haven’t done in a long time,” the Bainbridge Island winemaker muses on another drizzly day of a particularly gloomy spring. “I wore sunscreen.”
Since founding the winery two decades ago, Albee evaluates the grapes each year, deciding when to harvest them and striving to perfect the Syrahs, Chenin Blancs, Lembergers and other varieties he produces. With a focus on continuous improvement, Eleven Winery has grown 20 percent annually over the past decade, producing 6,000 cases last year and placing it in the state’s top 10 percent most productive wineries.
The Washington State Wine Awards named Eleven Winery one of its Fabulous Four Wineries last year, awarding it a raft of gold and double gold medals—welcome recognition for an outfit Albee started in his garage after fixing up and refinancing his house to fund the business. “We’ve been pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps for 20 years,” says Albee.
As passionate as he is about winemaking, Albee is on a mission to do more. He’s committed to pouring his success back into his community and beyond. To that end, Eleven Winery donates one percent of its profits to two charitable organizations—World Bicycle Relief, which serves rural communities in Africa, and Bicycle Works in South Seattle. Both groups provide bikes and bike know-how to marginalized communities in an effort to expand educational and economic opportunities. Albee is an avid cyclist who once aspired to race professionally.
The company also discounts and donates wine and event space at its Day Road headquarters for fundraisers supporting dozens of local causes such as Housing Resources Bainbridge, Kitsap Humane Society and Poulsbo Community Orchestra. Meanwhile Albee and his team strive to make the winery and tasting rooms welcoming to all, with “approachability” among the company’s core values.
“The wine business in particular has historically been and is still seen as the province of rich white people, and I've been fighting against that from day one,” he asserts. “I have always wanted to provide a non-snobby experience for anyone who visits the tasting room.”
Beyond the winery, Albee has served as a Chamber of Commerce chair and mountain biking coach. Plus, he’s president of the Bainbridge Winery Alliance. He doesn’t seek leadership positions, he insists. Rather he finds he is often the person “least unwilling to lead.”
He’s humble as well about the impact of his contributions, including becoming the state’s first carbon-neutral winery. “We’re a small company,” he says. “We’re not going to change the world all by ourselves, but we’re gonna try to do our small part and hopefully inspire other people in other companies to do the same thing.”
