What is Lee short for?

Lees are, basically, dead yeast and other junk produced by fermentation. If you're reading about making wine, you'll see discussion of "racking" the wine to remove the lees.

The way you've written it, though, you may be referring to the nautical phrase "hard alee!" which means, essentially, "turn the ship sharply to downwind", leeward being the opposite of windward (the direction the wind is coming from).