Sturgeon eggs are prepared for packing at the Sturia aquaculture farm in Saint Genis-de-Saintonge, December 7, 2022 (AFP/Archives/GEORGES GOBET)
In an aquaculture farm near Bordeaux, Christophe Baudoin passes an ultrasound device on the belly of a sturgeon to test its eggs and ensure the quality of the caviar produced in France.
“Caviar!” he announces, as the monitor shows the right shimmer around each round grain, before shouting “too ripe!”, a sign that the pregnancy cycle has gone too far and the eggs have softened, losing the crucial crunch. The female will therefore return to the water for two years.
For Sturia, the flagship brand of France’s leading caviar producer, Sturgeon, it’s an incredibly laborious process: 20,000 fish a year undergo an ultrasound for 300 tonnes of caviar.
A process made essential with global warming. Because, with warmer waters which accelerate the pregnancy cycle, a large number of eggs are more and more often overripe.
“We have seen the conditions evolve in recent years, less and less harsh winters, it has been ten years since we have seen ice on the ponds”, underlines Christophe Baudoin.
One in five fish died in 2021 when water temperatures reached 30°, five degrees above a sturgeon’s comfort zone.
“You may not know each one by name, but it’s never nice to pull a dead fish out of the water – and of course the cost to the group is enormous,” stresses Sturia boss Laurent Dulau.
Fished to extinction in the wild – including Russian and Iranian waters of the Caspian Sea – sturgeon now exist almost exclusively on farms, mostly in China.
Withdrawal of sturgeon eggs which will be prepared to become caviar at the Sturia aquaculture farm near Bordeaux, December 7, 2022 (AFP/Archives/GEORGES GOBET)
In Gironde, the sturgeon has been fished for centuries, but its eggs have never been particularly appreciated: in the Middle Ages, they were even given to pigs.
It was the Armenian immigrants Melkoum and Mouchegh Petrossian, founders of the brand of the same name, who brought the fashion for caviar to France at the start of the 20th century.
They first persuaded César Ritz to put Caspian sturgeon eggs on the menu of his palaces before opening their boutique in Paris.
– “Less but better” –
In France, breeding only started in the 1990s and has been growing since the ban on wild caviar in 2008.
A risky project because it can take up to 10 years to raise a sturgeon… and discover that the quality of the caviar is not there. The first caviars had the taste of mud, which is better and better controlled. But it is the Chinese caviar schrenki with golden grains and a rounder and more complex taste that is favored by French chefs.
Preparation of boxes of caviar at the Sturia aquaculture farm, December 7, 2022, near Bordeaux (AFP/Archives/GEORGES GOBET)
Unable to compete with China in terms of quantity, French producers rely on sustainable agriculture. Ultrasound thus avoids killing the sturgeons unnecessarily and they do not use antibiotics.
Sturia sends sturgeon meat to be used for rillettes, the collagen-rich gonads for cosmetics, the skin for leather, and a specialized glue popular with luthiers.
Mr Dulau says the emphasis on traceability and quality is boosting caviar’s image after the overfishing crisis: “The idea is to produce less, but better”.
Michel Berthommier, another Aquitaine caviar producer named Caviar Perlita, is frustrated that “nine out of 10 French restaurants, maybe 10 out of 10” still source their supplies from China. “We sell more in Singapore than to restaurants 10 km from here,” he says, although he thinks the transparency of French production will end up winning over buyers.
“Before, there was a mystery around how these fish were raised. Today we are completely transparent about how our fish live, how we feed them, how we make our selections”.
© 2022 AFP
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