Stone fruit

The first question many ask is what is a stone fruit? If you want to get technical, it’s a thin-skinned and fleshy fruit surrounding a single hard shell (or pit). Common varieties include peaches, plums, nectarines, apricots, mangoes, and lychees—to name a few. In all there are more than 60 varieties of stone fruit, and John Gibson, owner of Golden Bear Ranches, grows many on his Central Valley farm.

While John sells and ships much of his annual harvest internationally, that’s not true for the stone fruit. Anything he grows in this category is reserved for local restaurants and stores. This ensures the stone fruit grown on site is super fresh when it reaches the consumer, since it doesn’t need to travel far. John stumbled into growing stone fruit by request of restauranters. While he was supplying restaurants, including eight to ten local establishments as well as French Laundry in Napa Valley, chefs started asking for varieties of the fruit they couldn’t find in stores. Because he plants, harvests, and hand delivers all of his product, he had a lot of one-on-one time with chefs who could tell him what was in demand, or hard to get. Many may be surprised to hear that nuts like pistachios and almonds as well as raspberries, blackberries, cherries, and coconuts are all stone fruits, too.