More California Caviar
Not so fast Missouri, California is also planning to
take advantage of the surge in domestic caviar interest in the wake of the
beluga ban. The
Sacramento Bee reports on a couple
of California companies which do big business in farmed sturgeon. We've mentioned
Sterling Caviar from Stolt Sea Farm before but another
California company, Tsar Nicoulai Caviar Company is also seeking to make big
gains during the upcoming season. Caviar is big business in the U.S., we spent $148 million on imported caviar
last year and only about $19 million on the domestic white sturgeon kind. Fred Conte, an aquaculture specialist at the
University of California, Davis says that California is America's caviar capital and that Stolt and Tsar Nicoulai
account for about 75 percent of domestic production. Since it takes many years for a sturgeon to come to maturity and
produce roe, the caviar companies are unable to up production for this year's holiday season. Tsar Nicoulai sells a
wide variety of roe including infused flavors of whitefish caviar as well as California osetra from their sturgeon farm
in Wilton, California. They also have a caviar cafe in San Francisco where you can order a variety of caviar and fish
dishes including the American Caviar sampler shown here.
