More California Caviar

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Nov 7th 2005 at 11:05AM

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.