PSometimes, for the end of year celebrations, the gourmet is tempted by caviar at a bargain price in the supermarket. The sturgeon egg is then a flagship product on the shelves. Or how to lure the French to hook them when they open their wallets wide to fill their baskets. A very courted lavishness.
This caviar is often Italian, when the Peninsula prides itself on being the leading European producer, with 65 tonnes. Italy sells the product from time to time at a low price. The reason is the fierce battle between competitors on all continents – the big caviar fish. The most recent is not the least greedy, in this case the Chinese company Kaluga Queen. “In 2011, China decided to pre-empt the market. This country has become the world’s largest producer, weighing 250 to 280 tons, including 200 tons produced by Kaluga Queen », explains Laurent Dulau, director of the Kaviar company, known for its Sturia brand. An epic born in the Amur River, where two species of sturgeon spawned, Schrenki and Dauricus, the hybrid of which now populates fish farms.
This rising Chinese wave is destabilizing the markets. Especially since caviar, a fresh and sensitive product, is hardly suitable for remaining in cupboards. You have to sell it, and the prices go down. Enough to shake up the world number two, the Italian Agroittica. Even more so as he sees a new opponent arrive in the neighboring water line ready to beat him to the post, the Pole Antonius Caviar, who has passed the 40 tonne mark.
Fish farming has taken over
Caviar also comes from Bulgaria, the United States, Vietnam and even Madagascar. But, despite the preconceptions anchored in people’s minds, not in Russia, a country where the unlimited exploitation of wild sturgeons, causing the resource to disappear, ended in a failure. Fish farming has taken over. And sturgeon farms spring up where money and water flow freely. Result: according to Mr. Dulau, “in eleven years, global annual production has multiplied by 2.5 to 600 tonnes, while the value of the caviar market has remained the same, at almost a billion euros”.
French production of precious black eggs is at 50 tonnes, but it would like to shine on the stalls. Four companies, Caviar House & Prunier, Kaviar group, L’Esturgeonnière and Caviar de France, have decided to put their eggs in the same basket to obtain a protected geographical indication (PGI). “In 2024, we will be certified Aquitaine caviar”, rejoices Olivier Cabarrot, CEO of Caviar House & Prunier. He mentions a price range going from 2,250 to 8,000 euros per kilo for this refined French delicacy, to be put into perspective with the duration of breeding of the sturgeon. That is seven years for the baeri, nine years for the oscietra and twelve to fifteen years for the beluga. With the IGP, Aquitaine caviar claims clarity in a world where chiaroscuro reigns and wants to benefit from the added value linked to its rarity. French caviar swims against the current between the big fish…