Cultivating a Niche for Farmed Caviar

Down a winding levee road on the outskirts of Sacramento, just behind a beat-up old trailer, sit the offices of one of the nation’s more exclusive luxury food businesses.

The collection of concrete tanks and aluminum sheds might not bespeak glamour, but a growing network of chefs and foodies say Stolt Sea Farm’s white sturgeon caviar is the next best thing to fine Russian osetra.

Farm-raised caviar, once snubbed by food’s inner circle, is poised to become one of aquaculture’s hottest new niches because of habitat destruction in the Volga River and overfishing and poaching in the Caspian Sea, which historically supplied most of the world’s caviar.

The sturgeon population in the Caspian has dropped precipitously in recent years. In Russia, for instance, the catch declined to 2,533 tons in 1998 from 15,506 in 1990, according to United Nations data.

Plenty of firms are getting into caviar production, setting up farms from Idaho to Florida, but Stolt and another pioneering California firm, San Francisco-based Tsar Nicoulai, have almost a decade-long jump on the competition. They’re both getting a huge marketing boost this year from some environmental organizations that are promoting farm-raised caviar to chefs to protect the threatened beluga sturgeon.

Rick Moonen, chef at seafood restaurant Oceana in midtown Manhattan, for instance, has dropped imported caviar from his menu. Instead he’s begun putting together samplers of caviar from farm-raised paddlefish and white sturgeon and roe from salmon and trout, believing they deliver more consistent quality for the dollar than imports.

The U.S. government has poured millions into research to help create caviar production here. However, skeptics question the need for a flood of new farms, given caviar’s high price tag and limited market.

Commercial farms in North America and Western Europe already have begun turning out a large portion of the caviar on the world market, according to Serge Doroshov, who ran one of the Russian government’s aquaculture laboratories before he defected in the late 1970s. Doroshov, an animal science professor at UC Davis, has spent more than two decades doing the research that has allowed sturgeon to be adapted to fish farming.

“I don’t think it’s going to be a big boom,” Doroshov said. He admitted, though, that the United States’ status as the second-largest importer of caviar probably will help the chances of many upstarts.

At this point, Stolt’s venture is not profitable. But the company expects to be out of the red in the next couple of years as more of its stock of 100,000 sturgeon mature and it begins marketing its Sterling brand caviar directly, rather than through intermediaries.

For many others, it will take years to become profitable because of the time it takes female sturgeon to mature enough to produce roe.

“Someone who wanted to start [caviar production] today would have to wait eight to 10 years,” said Peter Struffenegger, who runs Stolt’s Sacramento Valley caviar operations. “A lot can happen in that time.”

Tsar Nicoulai, Stolt and one of Stolt’s Sacramento suppliers, the Fishery, started their caviar farms here because the Sacramento Delta has a native population of white sturgeon. California and some other states prohibit farming of nonnative species.

With permission from the state Department of Fish and Game, they caught just enough wild fish to start their farms.

Since the late 1980s, Stolt has bided its time, feeding and breeding these prehistoric creatures, which can grow to more than 100 pounds, in concrete ponds.

Most of the males are butchered for the market. The females are separated from the males when they are 3 or 4 years old and allowed to mature for four to six years more before being injected with hormones to force egg production.

The eggs are removed from the fish seconds after it is killed. They are strained, rinsed, salted, drained and packed away for at least a couple of months to age and develop a richer, more buttery flavor.

The huge investment of time and money is the main reason farm-raised white sturgeon caviar costs about $36 to $50 an ounce--though it’s still cheaper than the $50 to $60 charged for osetra and $90 to $100 an ounce for imported beluga.

However, Stolt believes prices for farm-raised fish could edge slightly higher as the Caspian’s resources are depleted.

Although new hatcheries have been built in Russia, China and other countries, many believe it will be difficult to restore wild stocks of sturgeon unless the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora bans global trade of beluga sturgeon and its roe--and unless consumers begin to reduce their dependence on imported osetra and sevruga caviar.

“It’s clear that the measures they’re taking now have not been enough, because the populations there are still declining. We believe the beluga sturgeon is now on the brink of extinction,” said Ellen Pickitch of the Wildlife Conservation Society. Pickitch’s group, along with the Natural Resources Defense Council and SeaWeb, has launched a “Roe to Ruin” campaign and is lobbying to get the beluga declared an endangered species in the U.S., thereby banning imports.

These conservationists recently took out full-page ads attempting to get chefs who were catering Academy Awards parties to use farm-raised roe. And they will soon begin lobbying chefs in the rest of the country through mailings and by holding caviar tastings.

Persuading trend-setting chefs to make a socially conscious decision is one thing, but convincing the hard-core group of caviar purists that farm-raised is better is quite another.

Only in the last year have Stolt and other producers begun to gain acceptance for their product.

“Initially we were snubbed,” said Charles Edwards, Stolt’s sales manager. “In some cases, [caviar distributors] wouldn’t even taste it.”

Indeed, one of Moonen’s loyal customers at Oceana, a die-hard beluga fan, still won’t make the switch.

Dale Sherrow of Seattle Caviar Co. said comparing farm-raised caviar to wild imported caviar is like comparing a relatively young California Cabernet Sauvignon to an old-growth French Bordeaux. Sherrow acknowledged, however, that most people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

“In my opinion, it comes very close to Caspian osetra, but it doesn’t have the depth in flavor or the complexity. There are some very subtle differences,” Sherrow said.

Struffenegger said Stolt tries not to compare its Sterling caviar to imports but is simply trying to persuade people of farm-raised caviar’s own merits, such as reliable quality and sustainability.

Besides, claiming any one product is superior is difficult because of the huge differences in personal tastes, said Dafne Engstrom, who owns Tsar Nicoulai with her husband, Mats.

“If you take, say, three or four tins and do a blind tasting, 80% of the time people pick the farmed, but as soon as they know it’s farmed, it’s not good enough,” Engstrom said.

To maintain the mystique and glamour, Engstrom Russianized her Greek family name Nicouls in the brand name Tsar Nicoulai and dubbed her Delta caviar “farmed California osetra,” a claim that others dispute, saying that though the fish are the same genus, they are different species.

The Sacramento Delta is not mentioned on the labels of any of the farm-raised caviar tins, for the world of caviar is all about reputation and scarcity.

And Stolt’s Imperial caviar, with its rare grayish-green color, fetches more than double the darker gray and black caviar, even though it tastes exactly the same, said Joe Melendez, who is responsible for sorting and grading the eggs pulled from Stolt’s fish.

“Anything that’s hard to get, people want,” he said.

Caviar production is not an entirely new enterprise in California. In the late 1800s, commercial fishermen in the U.S. were catching sturgeon in great numbers and shipping huge amounts of caviar to Europe.

And it wasn’t always so swanky. Back then there were no toast points and creme fraiche. The salty delicacy was in such great supply that California bars served it as a snack to encourage more beer drinking, just as popcorn and peanuts are served today. But the fish became so threatened that commercial fishing was cut off in 1915.

If Struffenegger has his way, it would be almost that accessible again. He envisions selling less expensive grades of caviar to young adults who might not be able to afford the top-quality stuff.

And Moonen says the quality of farm-raised caviar is just getting too good to justify paying the outrageous prices for beluga and other imported eggs, which often aren’t of good quality or in some cases are mislabeled.

“I just got fed up with dealing with it,” Moonen said. Moreover, he added, he can offer these other products in greater quantity so customers can really get a feel for a variety of tastes.

“You have to have enough caviar to be able to truly appreciate its flavor and finish. You can’t do that with five grains of caviar on your plate.”

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Caviar Primer

The three most coveted types of caviar are imported from countries such as Russia and Iran, which border the Caspian Sea.

Beluga: The most rare and expensive caviar, taken from the beluga sturgeon. Its dark-gray, briny pearls sell for about $90 to $100 an ounce because of a growing scarcity.

Osetra: Perhaps the most popular caviar, from the Russian sturgeon. With a slightly nutty or buttery flavor. It ranges in color from golden to brown to black and retails for about $50 to $60.

Sevruga: The most intense flavor, from the stellate sturgeon. The gray, small-grained pearls retail for about $40 to $50.

Sources: Caviar retailers and purveyors