Believe it or not, California is where it’s happening in caviar.
Based in Sacramento, Sterling Caviar is producing so-called black pearls of sturgeon roe that are earning both respect and a tidy profit. Their story goes back to 1979 and the overthrow of the Shah of Iran. After the U.S. embargoed Iranian caviar harvested from the Caspian Sea, a group of American businessmen thought of a new venture — producing caviar in California using the white sturgeon.
It turns out that the well waters around the state capital were just the right temperature for starting a sturgeon fish farm. Combining good science and business savvy, Sterling has become one of the world’s top producers of caviar. But the industry is hardly immune to threats, ranging from poachers linked to the Russian mob to environmental risks.
An earlier version of this story first aired July 22, 2005.
- Sterling Caviar
- Poachers leave sturgeon in very dangerous waters, San Francisco Chronicle
- Wardens bust caviar poaching ring in capital and San Francisco, North County Times
- Eureka! It’s from California, LA Times
- U.S. Caviar With a Russian Accent, The Washington Post via Miami University
- Try it, you’ll like it! America’s caviar casts off its stigma, Columbia News Service, Columbia University Graduate School ofJournalism
- Caspian caviar, history of caviar, types and classes; legal, geographic trade and environmental background, American University
- Caviar Crisis Spurs Caspian Sea Summit, National Geographic News
- The [Caspian] sturgeon poachers’ secret world, BBC