Edi Keber in WineFoot

My recent visit to the Collio region in Italy has left a permanent mark on me both personally and professionally. I can’t remember the last time I have met a more passionate group of wine-industry folks and certainly have never met anyone with the history of this region (that’s not to say, they’re not out there, I just haven’t met them yet).

One of the coolest dudes there was Edi Keber – his winery spans multiple family generations and sits right on the border of Italy and Slovenia.  In fact, some of the vineyards are in Slovenia. His passion matches his hospitality and obvious love for both his craft and the people who enjoy wine.

Here is Edi, in his own words (via an interpreter):

Edi and his staff welcomed myself and the other wine/food editor’s I was traveling with, with open arms and an open table where he proceeded to feed us a home-made barely-soup with bacon in it.

During the lunch, he proceeded to talk about the history of the wine, the way they produce it to preserve a sense of place and make some fun jokes. He told us that he is moving to all concrete fermentation tanks as apposed to stainless because “stainless has no soul”.

As you can see in the picture below, he doesn’t take himself all too seriously and also has no problem heavily promoting Collio (the logo on the apron and the yellow glasses – yellow is the “color of Collio since it’s a common color of the wine there – in fact, one of the producers has a Porsche that says “Drink Yellow” on it.)

Edi was such a likable dude, that there were a few of us that told him “we aren’t too old to be adopted, however, he said he’d only do so if we were female”.

While his winery doesn’t have a website (that I know of anyways), you can find a bit more details on them at their U.S. importer, Jan D’Amore wines:

http://www.jandamorewines.com/edikeber.html