Once, 1976 I think it was, I had a friend in London who decided to celebrate selling her house with a party. The property had been completely cleared of all furniture and pictures, and was bare but for a freezer full of ice-cold bottles of vodka and a small table on which sat a kilogram tin of wild Beluga caviar. There was music, too, from a cassette player. I sat on the deep freeze with a bottle of vodka in one hand and a table knife in the other that I dug into the caviar at regular intervals, and ate the gleaming black pearls off the blade. I was delirious and deliriously happy. I knew then that I’d never have the chance to indulge in this way again. Nor have I, though God knows, I’ve tried.

This gross, vulgar, happy indulgence didn’t mark the beginning of my love affair with fish eggs. I’d already inherited from my father a fondness for herring roes fried in butter, arranged on toast, doused with lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce and dusted with cayenne pepper. I’d even come across keta (salmon eggs) and Avruga (caviar made from herring eggs). But I realised that these fruits of fishes’ reproductive systems were base metal the first time I tasted caviar from a sturgeon, when my uncle John had brought a tin of Russian caviar of unknown pedigree to share with my family. I was about 11, and feeling those tiny, fragile capsules burst softly against the roof of my mouth, letting the ethereal, buttery, seaweed-and-iodine juices roll down my throat, was a moment of revelation.

My childhood infatuation turned into a full-blown love affair around 1975 when I discovered the Rivoli Bar at the Ritz. In those days, it was situated below stairs in the hotel, and it used to serve foie gras sandwiches and/or caviar sandwiches plus half a bottle of Champagne for £5 at lunch. And when I say sandwiches I mean two slices of the Chorleywood bread process’s finest sliced white with a slab of foie gras pâté or a black wodge of finest Beluga stuffed between them. The crusts of the bread had been cut off, naturally, and the slices cut diagonally, but it was that de haut en bas combination of the highest of high-end gastronomic luxury and low-caste carb that proved irresistible. I nearly bankrupted myself treating myself to these essential dainties.

I wasn’t much interested in the provenance, type, quality, history or mythology of caviar back then. But that unlikely culinary masterpiece was to awaken a passion that I’ve never been able to satisfy as frequently as I would’ve liked. While the vodka-and-Beluga-fuelled house-leaving bash marked a high point in terms of caviar consumption, it wasn’t until a caviar tasting given by the eminent importers, WG White, at the Connaught Hotel in 1994, that my curiosity was seriously piqued. As one of a group of dedicated researchers (ie, slacker food writers) I worked my way through Beluga, Oscietra and Sevruga from Russia, Iran and China, nine in all, with such refined discrimination, that I had what you might call an epiphany. The tasting revealed how varied caviars could be, depending on breed of sturgeon, season and feed. If my memory is correct, Oz Clarke and I decided Chinese Oscietra from a spring-caught fish, was the most complex and satisfying of those on show. More particularly, we were told two tales that encapsulated the exotic and mysterious world of caviar production.

Sevruga Caviar with CITES Seal
Sean Gallup//Getty Images

In those days, the world of caviar was relatively simple. There were — and are — some 27 species of sturgeon all told in the Acipenseridae family, some only found in certain parts of the world. Although almost all have been treated as sources of the precious eggs at one time or another, three species were, and remain, the backbone of caviar production: huso huso for Beluga, Acipenser gueldenstaedtii for Oscietra and Acipenser stellatus for Sevruga.

The steel grey to obsidian black Beluga was generally acknowledged as the boss caviar as the eggs are the largest. However, some connoisseurs preferred Oscietra, which was smaller and the colour of which ranged from dirty ivory to green through gold. It was, they said, more subtle and complex. The slate grey to charcoal black Sevruga was smaller than either, and, while not to be ignored, was generally held to be not of the same interest or quality. There was also pressed caviar made of damaged eggs that looked like tar, smelt forcefully of fish, and was prized by hard-core caviar aficionados.

At the time, and, indeed, until the Nineties, 80–90 per cent of all caviar came from fish that swam wild in the Caspian Sea and the rivers that flowed into it. The production of Russian caviar was firmly controlled by its Ministry of Fisheries. The situation on the Iranian side was confused thanks to bitter squabbles between Iran’s (actually Persia back then) various rulers before the Islamic revolution of 1979. After that, it took the Shilat Trading Company, the Iranian state fishing operation, 10 years to sort out the situation and take control.

This was made possible, so we were told, by one of the last acts of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1983, who approved the reclassification of sturgeon as scaled fish, which as such could be handled by devout Muslims, so important was the foreign exchange earned by the export of caviar to the fledgling Islamic republic. It seemed so improbable, it must be true, and was. Even more bizarre was the tale of China’s modern caviar industry.

The Chinese had never made such a thing of caviar as their Russian and Iranian neighbours, although Acipenser schrenckii and Huso dauricus were numerous in the Amur River that forms the boundary between China and Russia. Then, at the height of the Cold War in the Sixties, China decided to create a caviar industry of its own for much the same reason that the ayatollahs of Iran later did. This was easier planned than done. At the time, the Chinese and Russian armies were drawn up on either side of the Amur River, shelling each other intermittently, and America wasn’t talking to Russia or China because they were black-hearted communists. So, while official diplomatic relations between the three superpowers were strained, the sturgeon-fishing stations on the Chinese side of the Amur River were built by the Bechtel Corporation of America, to specifications provided by Russian experts; the whole project being financed by the Californian Sunshine Fine Foods company, thus illustrating the power of financial self-interest to overcome any obstacle.

For a brief period in the Eighties, sturgeon fishing and caviar production was an orderly and relatively well-managed business. However, Caspian sturgeon were already having a tricky time thanks to poor river management, overfishing, pollution and natural happenstance, and were in steep decline. Then, in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed and with it the Ministry of Fisheries, guarantor of Russian caviar production. Suddenly, centralised control vanished and those states with coastal claims to parts of the Caspian Sea and its rivers — Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, as well as Russia and Iran — all started exercising their rights to harvest caviar. In the absence of an enforcement agency, Caspian caviar production became a true free market, in which Russian criminal gangs took a keen interest.

There’s lots of money to be made — and lost — in caviar. Demand for this, the most desirable of fish eggs, like that for diamonds, always endures

Never exactly a transparent industry, it now became a murky free-for-all, with only Iranian caviar production maintaining any kind of integrity or quality control. Overfishing became rampant. Pollution took its toll. Perhaps most damaging of all, dams had been built on the Volga, Ural and Terek rivers that flow into the Caspian, restricting the movements of the sturgeon. Catches on the Caspian Sea declined by 70 per cent between 1978 and 1994. The sturgeon of the Amur River eventually succumbed to the same fate as those in the Caspian. Indeed, the global situation for sturgeon became so bad that in 1998 the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) persuaded the Caspian countries and the Chinese to stop the sale of caviar from wild fish altogether. And that, by and large, is the situation today. I’m told it is possible to find caviar from poached wild fish in Iran, Russia and Azerbaijan, but if anyone offers you wild caviar, it almost certainly isn’t; and even if it is, you shouldn’t be buying it. It’s caviar from farmed fish all round.

Farming sturgeon, however, has not brought clarity to the industry. If the former situation was murky, it now becomes bewilderingly fragmented. As well as Russia, Iran and China, sturgeon farming is carried out in France, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Israel, Moldova, Poland, Spain, Saudi Arabia, the USA and Uruguay. There are even two caviar producers in the UK: Exmoor Caviar in the West Country and KC Caviar in Yorkshire. New countries are joining the caviar club almost by the month. China is the world’s largest producer, and Hangzhou Qiandaohu Xunlong Sci-Tech Company Limited, the largest farming operation, is responsible for 30 per cent of the world’s total. In the confusing realm of international caviar, the largest shareholder (24 per cent) in Hangzhou is Bill Holst, a scrap-metal merchant from Wisconsin, USA.

Iranian Caviar
Kaveh Kazemi//Getty Images

It’s no surprise the industry has exploded in recent years. While caviar from wild fish might be all but non-existent, the growth in demand has been exponential. The system for producing caviar is disarmingly simple. Modern distribution systems are quick and smooth. Computerisation gives instant traceability. What could possibly go wrong? Well, rather a lot, to judge by the number of sturgeon farms that have gone bust.

First off, you need fish, a good body of clean water, and time — lots of time. Anyone hoping to make quick returns from farming sturgeon is going to be disappointed. Sturgeon of whatever species take a long time to reach sexual maturity when they start producing eggs. Different species mature at different times. For example, females of the largest of the sturgeon family, Beluga, require 16 to 18 years to reach that point. That’s one of the reasons why Beluga caviar is so expensive. Incidentally, the largest sturgeon ever recorded was a female Beluga caught in the Volga in 1827; she weighed 1,571kg, was 7.2m long and estimated to be well over 100 years old.

Other sturgeons — Acipenser gueldenstaedtii and Acipenser stellatus — don’t take so long to mature, but still it will be a minimum eight to 10 years before eggs can be harvested. Of course, this isn’t quite quick enough for the industry, so various species have been cross-bred to produce a faster-maturing fish. These hybrid fish have added their own caviars to the Beluga, Oscietra and Sevruga line up, namely Imperial (eggs of Huso dauricus bred with Acipenser schrenckii); and Platinum (gueldenstaedtii bred with Acipenser baerrii — the Siberian native).

Whatever the species, it takes an unconscionably long time before you start getting
a return on your investment and sturgeon take a good deal of looking after. They’re prone to various bacterial and fungal infections, particularly in high-density stocking systems. They have to be fed. In the wild, sturgeon are bottom-feeding omnivores. In farms, they are fed on high-protein pellets. As with all fish farming, there’s a great deal of waste matter that needs to be dealt with.

And when you do begin to think your troubles are at an end, there are the delicate and highly perishable eggs. Handling and grading them requires skill and judgement. Mixing them with salt, ditto. Packing them, ditto. And all that’s before you start selling your caviar into an unforgivingly competitive market. Small wonder that so many caviar farmers have gone bankrupt. On the other hand, one farmer’s bankruptcy is another wannabe sturgeon farmer’s opportunity. It takes so much effort to set up a farm, that, as Sergei Reviakin of Mottra Caviar, which trades in London but farms sturgeon and produces caviar in Riga, Latvia, says, “If you really want to get started in this business, the cheapest way is to buy up a bankrupt producer.”

This brings us to another thorny issue: fish welfare. Traditionally, female sturgeons are killed in order to extract the valuable eggs as rapidly as possible. The remaining body flesh is sold on for eating fresh or smoking. To some, this seems wasteful, and in recent years sundry methods have been developed with a view to sparing the fish, so that she can produce several seasons of ovulation. In theory, this seems an admirable move as well as a practical one, and has generally been hailed as “ethical”, “sustainable”, “compassionate” and other terms that resonate in contemporary food marketing.

Various companies around the world have developed processes along the same lines. Mottra, the Russian/Latvian venture, is hailed by chefs Mark Hix, Mitch Tonks and Francesco Mazzei, as well as Ewan Venters, CEO of Fortnum & Mason, and Vivace GmbH of Germany (now sadly gone bust). A Swiss company, Zwyer Caviar, raises its sturgeon “deep in the heart of Uruguay”; while KC Caviar has 500 fish in South Milford, Yorkshire. All very admirable. Needless to say, things aren’t quite as simple as that.

The technique for “stripping” fish of their roe has been around for centuries, though modern technology has made it less hit and miss. Using ultrasound, farmers can keep track of the development of the fishes’ eggs. When the time draws near, the fish are injected with a naturally occurring hormone to induce ovulation and facilitate the stripping process.

However, according to many connoisseurs, caviar produced by the “ethical” system, not only does not have the same intensity as caviar produced by the traditional method, but the eggs don’t have the same firmness, either, because they’re not fully mature. There are even dark mutterings of “spherification”, the technique of using sodium alginate and calcium chloride or calcium gluconate lactate (among others) to form squishy, fishy spheres just like real eggs, in order to actually create “caviar”.

Once the eggs have been taken from the fish by whatever method, speed is of the essence. The eggs are handled with a gentleness their delicacy and price demands. Wastage is too costly to be allowed. They are separated from the sac containing them and pressed carefully through a special sieve. The eggs are washed several times to get rid of impurities and then patted dry before being mixed with salt, or salt and borax, to heighten flavour and act as a preservative. Now the caviar can be stored until required, when it’s packed into specially lined tins. Most caviar in the UK is sold between three and six months from the moment of extraction. Some countries, France and America, for example, prefer a stronger-flavoured caviar, which is stored for up to 12 months before packing and selling.

Caviar
Barbara Alper//Getty Images

It still remains a confused, confusing and opaque business. Information, misinformation, smoke and mirrors, mystique and mythology overlay anything to do with caviar. Nor does there appear to be a lot of love lost among caviar producers, who seem only too ready to cast aspersions and worse on their competitors. Perhaps not surprisingly. There’s lots of money to made — and lost — in caviar. Demand for this, the most desirable of fish eggs, like that for diamonds, always endures.

Of course, chefs play their part in this. Caviar has always had a place in classic French sauces for fish. Great chefs have found ways of representing caviar as it were, frequently teaming it with unorthodox ingredients. Jacques Pic’s “Filet de loup au caviar” seems almost traditional compared to Joël Robuchon’s legendary “Gelée de caviar à la créme de chou-fleur”, or Marco Pierre White’s “Tagliatelle of oysters with caviar”. Heston Blumenthal upped the stakes by teaming caviar with white chocolate (oddly successful).

More recently, Jason Atherton created a dish under the humble title of “Fish and chip”. A substantial log of potato is braised in turbot stock until it absorbs all the liquid and becomes crisp on the outside. This is topped by a generous thatch of gleaming black Sevruga. However, farmed caviar has led to a certain ubiquity. In the last run of The Great British Menu, the BBC TV series on which I am a judge, dish after dish came slathered in the stuff (and haystacks of shaved truffles, too).

But will caviar ever lose its allure, cachet or price? Probably not. Far too much time, trouble, money and romance is invested in it. Caviar remains a benchmark of luxury, and luxury is ineffably sexy. As Ludwig Bemelmans, that great chronicler of high-end dining at the beginning of the last century, put it: “Caviar is to dining what a sable coat is to a girl in evening dress.”