Walk into the corner tasting room at 2901 Grand Avenue in Los Olivos and the first thing you notice is the wink: a wine label born from a vintage concert ticket and a love of Spinal Tap, the movie where the amp goes to eleven. That is E11even Wines, the personal, estate-grown project of Andrew Murray, where the idea is simple and a little subversive, that the very best barrels of a long career deserve a label of their own.

The story

The roots of E11even run through one of the Santa Ynez Valley’s defining families. In 1990, Jim and Fran Murray sold their Southern California restaurants and traded the city for 200 acres of Santa Barbara County hillside. Their son, Andrew Murray, planted vines as a teenager and grew up to become one of the Central Coast’s most respected winemakers, a name long associated with serious, sun-warmed Rhone reds and whites made in Los Olivos.

E11even is what happens after three decades of that work. It is not a second-string label and it is not declassified leftovers. Andrew built it as a way to bottle the standout barrels of each vintage, the lots that overdeliver, and to show off the full range of what the estate can grow beyond the Rhone grapes that made his reputation. The name itself is pure Andrew Murray: he found an old concert ticket, loved the gag in Spinal Tap about turning the volume to eleven, and decided his most expressive wines should carry that same go-past-ten spirit.

The wines are made on the Curtis Estate in the heart of Los Olivos, the same ground Andrew has farmed and known intimately for thirty years. That kind of tenure shows up in the glass, in the confidence to pick at the right moment and to let each site speak in its own accent rather than chasing a house formula.

The place

Los Olivos sits in the warm, oak-dotted upper reaches of the Santa Ynez Valley, far enough inland from the Pacific that the afternoons turn genuinely hot and the nights drop cool and clear. That swing is the whole secret of the place. The transverse mountain ranges of Santa Barbara County run east to west, an unusual orientation that funnels marine air and morning fog up the valley before the sun burns it off, so the grapes ripen fully by day and hold onto their acid and freshness overnight.

The estate falls within the Los Olivos District, a sub-appellation carved out of the larger Santa Ynez Valley AVA precisely because this stretch of well-drained, gravelly and sandy loam over old riverbed soils behaves differently from the cooler coastal hills to the west. It is Bordeaux-and-Rhone country, a place where Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, Syrah, Grenache, and Mourvedre all find enough warmth to come in ripe and generous.

The Curtis Vineyard, the home site that sits directly above the estate winery, is a cool, high-elevation block by Los Olivos standards. That elevation buys a long, even ripening season, the slow accumulation of flavor that lets a wine build structure without losing its nerve.

What they grow and make

E11even farms roughly 150 acres of vines across three vineyard sites and three appellations, with the 100-acre Curtis Vineyard as its anchor. On that home estate the plantings lean toward Bordeaux whites and reds, Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc, Riesling, Cabernet Franc, and Petit Verdot, alongside the Rhone grapes Andrew Murray built his name on, Syrah, Grenache, and Mourvedre.

The bottlings carry the same playful naming as the label. Big Bottom is the full-tilt, Cabernet-based red blend, the rock-show wine, dense and dark and built for the table. Unplugged is its opposite number, a lighter, brighter white blend made for an afternoon on the porch. There is a smooth, coastal-styled Pinot Noir drawn from an older planting at the Rio Vista Vineyard out in the Sta. Rita Hills, a wine that shows what cool-climate fruit can do in Andrew’s hands. And the estate’s Rhone heritage lives on in limited Syrah bottlings plus varietal and blended expressions of Grenache and Mourvedre.

What ties it all together is intent. These are wines chosen barrel by barrel, the lots that earned their own label, so the range is less a tidy lineup and more a highlight reel of whatever overperformed that vintage.

Farming

The E11even wines are estate grown, made with what the winery calls zero shortcuts, the fruit coming off vineyards Andrew Murray farms himself rather than buys in. The Curtis Vineyard’s cool, high-elevation position is worked for that long, even ripening season, the kind of patient farming that lets flavor and structure arrive together instead of racing each other.

Visiting

The E11even tasting room sits right on the corner in downtown Los Olivos, a walkable town of tasting rooms, a general store, and good restaurants where you can park once and spend the whole day on foot. It is an easy, unpretentious place to settle in and work through the range.

Food pairing

The pleasure of a label built from standout barrels is that it gives you a wine for almost any plate. Reach for Big Bottom, the Cabernet-based blend, when there is a ribeye or a rack of lamb on the fire. Cabernet’s firm tannins bind to the protein and fat in red meat, so the wine tastes rounder and the meat tastes cleaner, a complementary match where richness meets structure rather than richness piling on richness.

The Rio Vista Pinot Noir wants something earthier and lower-key, seared duck breast with a cherry pan sauce or a mushroom risotto, where the wine’s savory, red-fruited core meets the dish on shared earthy notes. Pour Unplugged, the white blend, against goat cheese, a citrus-dressed salad, or grilled white fish, letting its acid cut the richness and reset the palate between bites. For the Syrah, think peppered, charred, and smoky, grilled sausages or anything off the wood fire. If you are not sure where to start, our wine pairing generator will match a specific bottle to whatever you are cooking tonight.

To go deeper on the region and the grapes behind these wines, explore the Santa Ynez Valley AVA, browse the wider Santa Barbara wine country hub, and read our guides to California Cabernet Sauvignon and California Pinot Noir. When you are ready to plan a meal around a bottle, the wine pairing generator does the matchmaking.

For a tasting day that needs no designated driver, the Funk Zone urban wine trail gathers dozens of Santa Barbara County producers into a walkable grid of converted warehouses near the harbor.