Celebrity chef Hugh Acheson of Georgia will be among the featured guest chefs at the 2016 Kapalua Wine & Food Festival. Photo courtesy of Jason Hales.

Kapalua Wine & Food Festival will celebrate its 35th annual event June 9-12, 2016. Celebrity chef Hugh Acheson will be one of the featured guest chefs at the event.

Acheson is the author of the James Beard Award-winning cookbook “A New Turn in the South: Southern Flavors Reinvented for Your Kitchen.” He is also chef/owner of several establishments in Georgia: 5&10 and The National restaurants in Athens, Empire State South and Spiller Park Coffee in Atlanta, and The Florence in Savannah.

“A New Turn in the South” won the award for Best Cookbook in the field of “American Cooking” by the James Beard Foundation in 2012. His second cookbook is “Pick a Pickle: 50 Recipes for Pickles, Relishes, and Fermented Snacks” and his third, “The Broad Fork: Recipes for the Wide World of Vegetables and Fruit,” was released in the spring of 2015.

Food & Wine Magazine named Acheson Best New Chef in 2002 and the James Beard Foundation awarded him Best Chef Southeast in 2012. Hugh competed in Bravo’s Top Chef Masters, Season 3 and starred as a judge on Top Chef, Seasons 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13. He lives in Athens with his family.

The 2016 Kapalua Wine & Food Festival will feature an international theme in 2016. Interactive wine panels will focus on international winemakers and regions, including Australia and Spain. Other notable panels will be “Women in Wine”, “Scions of Family Wineries” and “Globetrotting Winemakers.”
Panelists will be announced in early 2016.

Tickets go on sale mid-January 2016 at the festival website.