Inside Europe's Biggest Caviar Farm | Regional Eats | Insider Food

Agroetti Calombarda Group in northern Italy produces 15% of the world's caviar. The group is based in the Lombardy region and is split into two companies, Ars Italica Caviar, which farms sturgeons near the city of Castelnuovo, and Calvisius Caviar, based in Calvisiano, where the two companies also share the extraction facility. In total, both farms stretch over 250 acres of land and breed seven species of sturgeon, with 28 tons of caviar produced per year. The most expensive caviar produced here, Beluga, costs $5,700 per kilogram. We visited Ars Italica's farm, where there are four species, Russian sturgeons, starred sturgeons, Adriatic sturgeons, and sterling sturgeons in the albino variety. At this site, we can find 300,000 sturgeons that can go from one-year-old up until 20 years old, and they can reach a weight of up to 60 kilos. And actually, this site is close to a natural reserve that's called Ticino. The fresh water and clean climate of the natural reserve make an ideal home for the sturgeon, which spends its first years in indoor incubators with well water, and is then moved to an outdoor water supply fed with resin water. We don't do anything other than get the eggs, so the fertilized eggs become larvae, they become small sturgeons, which, once they've grown up to about five years, can then be separated, so sexed. The male is recognized by the female only and exclusively through the auxiliary cell. We use at least this eco-graphic technique, so we do about 25,000 to 30,000 eco-graphics a year to separate the males from the females. Sturgeons take from 8 to 20 years to produce their eggs, depending on their species. At the top of the chain is beluga, which takes 20 years to mature. When ready, the belly of the fish is sliced open and the egg sac is removed. After extraction, eggs are rubbed over a metal grate and then rinsed to remove any impurities. As flavors differ from fish to fish, eggs from each sturgeon are packed individually. The eggs are then salted following the malosol recipe, which means there is a less-than-3% salt content. Then the eggs are packaged and will be mature and ready to be eaten in a few months, depending on which sturgeon breed they come from and on customers' preferences. O'shetra caviar comes from Russian sturgeon, sevruga from starved sturgeon, and da vinci from the Adriatic sturgeon. We are aware that each species gives distinctive features to the final product, to the final caviar. We were able to see the Russian sturgeon, for example, in today's research, and we have seen that it has particular distinctive features. Among the particular distinctive features is also a range of colors and a size that can vary. Normally, the larger the egg, the lighter it is, the more it has a value, and therefore the price is higher because it is rarer. Here, in addition to the species, there is a sort of classification in the type, so our top of the range is called imperial selection, and then there is a royal, which is always a selection with a fairly large grain and a medium color, and then there is caviar, which is in the classic variant, so the classic type. So we just left the production facility where we've seen how caviar was extracted and packaged, and now I've got in front of me a caviar tasting plate. We've got the ossetra in both royal and imperial, and then we've got the sevruga ones. The right way to taste caviar is to either use your hands or, if you want to use cutlery, with a spoon made from mother-of-pearl or bone because metal could alter caviar's natural taste. So my favorite one is actually the imperial one. It really has a sort of nutty taste. It's kind of strong, less fishy. It's a bit more creamy in your mouth. 27 species of sturgeons exist in nature. However, as much as 85% of wild sturgeons are now on the brink of extinction, and regulations have been in place since 1998 banning wild caviar trade and fishing. This is why many caviar farms use sustainable aquaculture to produce their delicacy. From 200 to 250 million years old, to make a comparison, the hominids, the sapiens, have a history of about a million, or a little more than a million years, compared to the evolution of sturgeons in the world, which is comparable to 200 times as much, so 200 to 250 million years old. It's a fish that can reach incredible sizes because it can even surpass one of these two, of these 27 species in the world. They can even surpass a ton of weight and over 5 to 6 meters in length. It's a very long-lived fish because it tends to have a life that can even go beyond a century.