Key Takeaways
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Caviar comes from sturgeon, a prehistoric fish family, and no other roe qualifies as true caviar.
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Nearly all caviar sold today is farmed, since wild sturgeon populations collapsed and trade is now tightly restricted.
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Every legal tin carries a code identifying the species, the country, and the year it was harvested.
Caviar comes from sturgeon. Not salmon, not trout, not lumpfish. The roe of those fish is worth eating, but none of it is caviar in any regulatory or culinary sense.
The longer answer covers three things: which sturgeon species, which countries farm them, and how the roe gets from a pond to a tin. That last part has changed more in the past 30 years than in the previous three hundred.
We source and ship caviar at Imperia Caviar, so this is the explanation we most often give people.
What Makes Roe Into Caviar
Caviar is the salt-cured, unfertilized roe of sturgeon, a fish family that predates most of what swims alongside it. Sturgeon are bottom feeders with bony plates rather than scales, and they take years to reach reproductive age. This is the single fact that shapes everything else about the industry.
The salt matters as much as the fish. Traditional curing uses a light hand, and tins marked malossol (Russian for "little salt") carry about 5% or less, letting the roe's flavor come through rather than the brine.
Anything labeled caviar that came from another fish should say so on the front. Salmon roe, trout roe, and lumpfish roe are all sold honestly under their own names by reputable sellers.
Which Sturgeon Species Caviar Comes From
There are more than two dozen sturgeon species, and a handful supply almost all commercial caviar.
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Royal Ossetra comes from Acipenser gueldenstaedtii, native to the Caspian and Black Seas. Nutty, briny, firm. The variety most people mean when they say caviar.
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Kaluga Hybrid Reserve is the result of crossing Huso dauricus with Amur sturgeon, both native to the Amur River. The largest pearls in the category are mild and buttery.
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Sevruga Reserve runs smaller and more delicate, clean with a subtle salinity.
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Limited Edition Amur, from Acipenser schrenckii, is earthy and intense, with a long finish.
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Beluga (Huso huso) is the famous one and has been unavailable in the United States for two decades.
Siberian and white sturgeon round out the commercial picture, the latter farmed heavily in California.
Which Countries Produce Caviar Today
For most of the last century, the answer was the Caspian Sea. Russia and Iran supplied the world, and the reputation of Caspian caviar still shapes how people talk about the category.
That map has been redrawn. China is now the world's largest producer and exporter of caviar, accounting for more than half of global farmed caviar output, with global farmed supply passing 600 metric tons in 2024. Production concentrates in Zhejiang and Sichuan provinces, where cold mountain water and glacial melt suit a fish that demands stable, clean conditions.
Europe holds a significant share, particularly in Italy, France, and Germany. The United States farms white sturgeon, mostly in California, and is also the world's largest buyer of caviar. Israel, Uruguay, Poland, and Bulgaria all run meaningful operations.
Chinese farming is more selective than the volume suggests. Sturgeon aquaculture there produces a great deal of fish, but only about a fifth goes toward caviar, because the maturity cycle is long enough that most farms cannot justify the wait.
Why Nearly All Caviar Is Farmed Now
Wild sturgeon are in the worst shape of any comparable animal group. They are the most threatened group of species on the IUCN Red List, with the majority of species classified as Critically Endangered after a century of overfishing, dam construction, and habitat loss.
International trade in sturgeon products has been regulated under CITES since the late 1990s, and legal caviar entering global markets now comes from aquaculture. Belugas have been specifically restricted in the United States since 2005.
Farming solved a supply problem and a conservation problem at once. It also solved a quality problem nobody expected: farmed roe is harvested on a schedule, chilled immediately, and packed under controlled conditions, which produces more consistent tins than wild harvests ever did.
If you want the full arc of how the industry got here, we've written a detailed history of caviar covering the Persians, the Russian court, and the American sturgeon boom of the 1800s.
How Caviar Gets From the Farm to the Tin
Sturgeon are raised for years before anything happens. Depending on the species, a female needs between eight and 15 years to produce roe worth harvesting, and farms screen individual fish with ultrasound to determine ripeness rather than harvesting on a fixed calendar.
Once the roe is taken, the process moves fast. The eggs are sieved from the membrane, rinsed, weighed, and salted within a short window because caviar begins to lose quality almost immediately. It goes into tins, gets sealed, and stays cold from that moment forward.
Grading happens by eye and by hand. Pearl size, firmness, color consistency, and separation determine which tier a batch lands in, and reserve grades are the batches that pass on every count.
How To Tell Where Your Caviar Came From
Turn the tin over. Every legally traded tin carries a code required by the international caviar labeling system, which reads as a short string of characters: a three-letter species code, a source letter (C means farm-raised), a two-letter country code, the year of harvest, the processing plant registration, and a lot number.
That code tells you which fish, which country, and which year, which is considerably more than the front label usually offers. It takes five seconds to read, and it's the fastest way to check whether a seller's story matches the paperwork.
The Short Version
Caviar comes from sturgeon, and in 2026, it comes from farms rather than the sea. The geography has shifted from the Caspian to China and Europe; the fish are raised under conditions their wild relatives never experienced, and the wild populations that made caviar famous are being left alone to recover.
Curious what the difference tastes like? Browse the full collection and start wherever makes the most sense for you.
Sources:
China has become the largest producer and exporter of caviar globally | Tridge
Chinese sturgeon and caviar industry | FAO
Sturgeon more critically endangered than any other group of species | IUCN
China Out Produces Every Other Country In Caviar Production | The Takeout
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