6 minute read
Treasure of the Sea
Spanning continents, cultures and cuisines, sturgeon caviar is one of the world’s foremost delicacies. And thanks to new harvesting techniques, the gastronome’s favourite roe is now more widely available than ever before, says Farhad Heydari
It’s the unique by-product of a 250-million-year-old fish that roamed the nutrient-rich freshwaters of the Caspian Sea until it was driven to near-extinction by overfishing and poaching as well as water pollution and damming. The fish, of course, is the ‘living fossil’ known as the sturgeon: a prehistoric, scale-less, elongated species that can weigh upwards of 454kg and whose unfertilised roe is made into caviar, resulting in the delicacy for which most of us go cuckoo.
And since 2006, it has been illegal to harvest any of the remaining wild stocks of the 27 biologically vulnerable species in the Acipenseridae family. Enter farmed sturgeon – a lucrative but time-consuming undertaking carried out in rivers, lakes and tanks that requires an enormous foundation of infrastructure and investment. And, with any given female requiring anywhere between seven and 14 years to reach sexual maturity and therefore carry eggs, it also requires huge patience for those who take on the enterprise.
SILVER SPOON Sturgeon caviar often finds a place on Christian Jürgens’ menu at Althoff Seehotel Überfahrt at the Tegernsee near Munich
Undeterred, as of 2017, the last year for which data was available, there were 2,329 commercial sturgeon farms around the world – a number that the Global Aquaculture Alliance predicted would double by 2020. Today, one can pinball anywhere from Uruguay, a country that doesn’t even have a local fish presence, to Vietnam, Belgium and beyond and find superlative supplies of ‘black pearls’ for a growing global clientele.
But the lion’s share of annual global production still comes courtesy of a triad of countries: China with nearly 70 tonnes; Italy with nearly 40 tonnes; and France with 25 tonnes. The latter, of course, has long had an association with the superlative roe – in some quarters, Paris-based and New York-sited Petrossian (petrossian.fr) is a household name and its third-generation custodian, Mikaël Petrossian, is bullish about the future.
“Over the past few years, the caviar market has been steadily growing: restaurants are experimenting with new ingredients, customers are being more adventurous in their food choices and the image of caviar has been demystified, making it more accessible,” he says. According to Petrossian, his firm works with a few farms around the world, with which it has developed longstanding relationships. “We get the best-possible raw material, whether it is from France, Bulgaria, Madagascar or China,” he explains, after which the in-house artisans, or “caviarologists”, work to develop all of its subtleties.
The leader in this trinity at the apex of global production, China, is changing the matrix by leaps and bounds. On the mountain-fringed, 579sq km Qiandao Lake, 354km south of Shanghai in Zhejiang province, lies Kaluga Queen (kalugaqueen.com), the largest caviar maker in the world, responsible for around one-third of global production. With no fewer than 14 varieties and with plans to go public next year at a valuation of around £600m, its caviar has graced many a chef’s table, including a constellation of three-Michelin-star restaurants, among them Per Se and French Laundry.
At the other end of the spectrum is bijou newcomer Rova Caviar (rova-caviar.com) from Madagascar. With an annual harvest of roughly five tonnes in 2019 from the waters of Lake Mantasoa, the island nation is now Africa’s foremost producer. But it certainly won’t be the last, as other reputable and detail-oriented farms are determined to join the fray to take advantage of the burgeoning market.
Even in the Old World, where entities like Hamburg’s Dieckmann & Hansen (dieckmann-hansen.com), Europe’s longest-operating caviar-trading company, dating back to 1869, have invested in spring-fed fisheries of their own, there are newbies. Situated outside the medieval German village of Jessen, in the eastern part of Saxony-Anhalt, Attilus Caviar’s (attiluscaviar.co.uk) sturgeon-rearing process benefits from water sourced from a natural
underground aquifer 50 metres below terra firma.
Meanwhile, in the northeast Polish region of Warmia, known as the ‘green lungs’ of the country as it borders the Napiwodzko-Ramucka Forest, Antonius (antoniuscaviar. com) is another operator harvesting Russian sturgeon (Acipenser gueldenstaedtii) and Siberian sturgeon (Acipenser baerii), this time from the crystalline waters of the Łyna River.
Water, as it unsurprisingly turns out, coupled with sustenance and time, is one of the determining factors in the successful harvest of good-quality caviar. In Calvisano, a town in the Po Valley of the Italian province of Brescia rich in fresh spring water, Calvisius (calvisius.com) has been purveying its rarefied beluga for the past 45 years, extracting it from the Huso huso sturgeon that, in addition to the Black, Caspian and Azov Seas, was also present in the Adriatic, the Ionian and their tributaries before its extinction. Even the United Kingdom is getting in on the act. The farm at Exmoor Caviar (exmoorcaviar.com), located in southwest England, is fed by some 40m litres of fresh Devonshire water daily – water that is naturally filtered through slate, shale and sandstone courtesy of Exmoor National Park.
Sturgeon aquaculture is also thriving over the pond in the US, across which there runs a river of the steel-grey to obsidian-black delicacy on offer. In North Carolina, Marshallberg Farm (marshallbergfarm.com) produces responsibly farmed and ecologically friendly Osetra, while Sturgeon Aquafarms in the panhandle of Florida markets its products under the Marky’s (markys.com) label, and Sterling (sterlingcaviar.com) in California’s Sacramento Valley pioneered land-based farming of California’s white sturgeon. And that’s just three of many.
The thorny issues of fish welfare and conservation have always been sidestepped by purveyors and producers alike (sturgeons are usually killed in order to extract their valuable eggs), but there are some sustainable innovations that are being tested and rolled out. Paramount among these is the California Caviar Company’s (californiacaviar. com) proprietary process, invented by marine biologist Angela Köhler, which allows caviar extraction without the need to slaughter the sturgeon.
Köhler’s method, which founder and CEO Deborah Keane says has been licensed to a handful of European brands, could be the next great chapter for the livelihood of this unique Triassic fish.
As Keane told The Wall Street Journal, “Köhler has mastered the art of truly sustainable caviar.” For the sake of its priceless catch, we certainly all hope so.
BLACK PEARL FARMING Left and bottom far left: Rova Caviar is harvested from Lake Mantasoa in Madagascar. Middle left: a serving of Browne Trading Company caviar. Below left: ‘Malossol’ (lightly salted) Royal Siberian Caviar from Attilus. Below right: Antonius Caviar, farmed in Warmia, northeast Poland
