Chinese caviar? A great idea!

Chinese farmed caviar is a continuation of the country’s ancestral aquaculture know-how. Did you know that carp farming was practiced in China as far back as five centuries BC?

Wild sturgeon (Huso Dauricus and Acipenser Schrencki) have long been caught in the Amur River, on the border between China and Russia. Sturgeon is part of China’s age-old tradition. Sturgeon flesh and eggs were eaten by the natives, but they never produced caviar.

It wasn’t until the second half of the twentieth century that the Chinese transformed sturgeon eggs into Chinese caviar and began breeding. In the 2000s, on the advice of Chinese CITES officials and the Chinese Academy of Fishery Science, producing farms approached Iranian experts to improve their production.
From then on, Kaviari, one of the first importers of wild Iranian caviar, played a key role. Jacques Nebot (who had signed multiple annual contracts with Iranian fishermen and had worked alongside them for 40 years) and Raphaël Bouchez put their experience to good use. Continuing this collaboration, Kaviari worked with them to produce the first great Chinese caviars.

A true partnership was created between the company and the Chinese aquaculture farm. Each year, Kaviari, the caviar boutique draws up precise specifications that enable it to supervise and control the production process of farmed sturgeon for Chinese caviar. Its teams now travel four or five times a year, during the caviar production phase, to monitor its meticulous elaboration and constantly improve its quality. Over the years, this collaboration has become a model of mutual trust, a valuable synergy for developing worldwide sales of this magnificent caviar.

Today, Chinese caviar from farms in China is exceptional. Numerous Michelin-starred chefs, connoisseurs and gourmet journalists are full of praise for this exceptional caviar. Among them, Marc Esquerré, editor-in-chief of Gault & Millau, described Kristal caviar very well: ” A highly seductive caviar with impressive physical qualities: a large golden grain, very crunchy right from the start. Its flavor is also there, with a compact, homogeneous mouthfeel, as pure as the lake water where the sturgeon flourish. The evolution is soft, gentle, with good length on notes of dried fruit, pine nuts and dried date. “