Corporate Executive Chef Kimball Jones

By combining California style with ingredients available in each location Chef Kimball works, he leaves a California heritage with the resident chefs he works with.

A graduate of the California Culinary Academy, Kimball spent 2-1/2 years as sous chef to Chef Bradley Ogden at San Francisco's Campton Place Hotel. It was there that he developed his passion for simple dishes made extraordinary with the use of local and seasonal ingredients. In 1986 Kimball became executive chef for Paula LeDuc Catering, a premier Bay Area catering company.

At Wente Vineyards, Kimball oversees the restaurant kitchen, designs menus for monthly winemaker dinners, manages the banquet and catering facilities, and is in charge of food for the winery's numerous special events, including the Wente Concerts at the Vineyards. Kimball prepares his dishes with as many estate-grown foods as possible-from the organic produce grown in the restaurant's garden to the extra virgin olive oil from the Wente family's century-old olive trees.

Kimball coauthored, with Wente Vineyards president Carolyn Wente, Sharing the Vineyard Table: A Celebration of Wine and Food from the Wente Vineyards Restaurant (November 1999).