The Tsar of Sustainable Caviar
The caviar of choice no longer comes from Russia. It’s locally and sustainably homegrown in Northern California.
Caviar is swimming across menus in the Bay Area right now, dolloped on everything from sushi handrolls to tater tots. It comes in an elegant flight paired with sparkling wines at Domaine Carneros in Napa. It casually dunks into chips and dip at the Girl & the Fig in Sonoma. You can get a tin delivered to your cottage at Nick’s Cove in West Marin, unless of course you’d prefer to have it tricking out a lobster roll in the restaurant. But the caviar of choice no longer comes from Russia. It’s locally and sustainably homegrown right here in Northern California.
Tsar Nicoulai is a local sturgeon farm just south of Sacramento, established by the Engstrom family in 1984, as one of the first in the United States. They had the foresight to focus on raising California white sturgeon, native to the Sacramento River Delta, long before wild beluga from the Caspian Sea and Black Sea was officially banned in 2005. The Bolourchi family took over ownership in 2014. They are originally from Iran, a country with a rich caviar tradition, and previously ran an import company called Pacific Plaza Imports. They’ve continued to grow the business, reopening a café in the Ferry Building in 2021 and getting on shelves at Whole Foods and Costco. This fall, Tsar Nicoulai acquired Sterling Caviar, the oldest caviar farm in the country. As 80% of the caviar in the U.S. now comes from California, Tsar Nicoulai is officially the biggest producer in the country.
While growing, Tsar Nicoulai has doubled down on sustainability efforts, which you can see for yourself. Tours of the farm are given a few time a year. Strolling into a field full of verdant tanks floating with duckweed, you might hear a soft splish or splash, before noticing the fins breaking the surface. Today, the farm spans about 40 acres and 80 tanks, home to somewhere in the range of 156,000 total fish, from fingerlings at a few weeks old to full-size and nearly eight feet long and 200 pounds.
These fish are born in a hatchery right on the farm, so the team never pulls babies from the wild. Like many farmed fish, they’re fed dried pellets, but a diet specifically designed for sturgeon, to mimic the crustaceans and small fish that a bottom dweller would eat in the wild. Unlike hybrid varieties that have been genetically modified to grow faster, these white sturgeon are allowed to slowly and naturally mature to 7 to 10 years old.
Their water moves through a recirculatory aquaculture system (RAS), which continuously circulates through the tanks and ponds to filter and conserve as much as possible. The duckweed in the tanks provides shade to help control the temperature, while hyacinth plants in the ponds help to filter the water. And, they’re working on separating liquids from solids, to turn fish poop into fertilizer. Many fish farms have to discharge water, and some repurpose it by pouring into rice fields, but Tsar Nicoulai prefers to not have to.
“Think of it like the world’s largest outdoor fish tank filter,” Bolourchi says. “It’s crazy advanced in terms of what it’s trying to do. “It closes the loop on a farm.”
To avoid waste, Tsar Nicoulai uses the whole fish, breaking down sturgeon in a smokehouse on site, and selling hot-smoked sturgeon, jerky, pâté and more. They were the first caviar farm in the world to grow their own aquaponic lettuces in 2018, according to their partners at UC Davis. Now Sensei Farms, owned by Larry Ellison, runs and manages their aquaponics system for research purposes. Additionally, they’ve installed solar panels, so the whole operation literally runs on California sunshine.
For their efforts, Tsar Nicoulai has been certified by Ecocert, a European organic inspection organization, and received an Environmental Stewardship award from Whole Foods. Over all, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch gives farmed caviar a green flag as a “best choice,” recommending California White Sturgeon raised in tanks.
You can taste the difference. Even a small spoonful bursts into a big buttery flavor with a long briny finish. “That sea butter, salted butter, tuna belly, umami—that’s the Tsar Nicoulai flavor,” Bolourchi describes. Tsar Nicoulai offers six different grades of their homegrown caviar, from jet black to speckled gold, teeny pearls to big beads. Compared to other breeds now farmed around the world, like Osetra from Greece or Kaluga from China, white sturgeon has a reputation for big flavor but soft texture. Occasionally, fine-dining chefs gripe about the texture; some specifically want distinct, firm pearls that pop on a plate. But more often, farm-to-table chefs are excited to work with a luxury ingredient now grown in Wine Country’s backyard.
In the fine-dining sphere, at the Michelin-starred Press in Napa, Chef Philip Tessier runs deep in caviar. He worked with wild beluga back in the day at Le Bernardin in NYC, and made the switch to farmed at Per Se, when early options disappointed.
“The biggest challenge with farmed caviar is that sturgeon are bottom feeders, so they can have a muddy quality, almost like wet leaves,” he says. But the industry has come a long way, and he says Tsar Nicoulai comes closest to “that clean, pure, wild fish flavor.” At Press, you can’t miss caviar on the menu in a couple of different dishes, including their signature caviar pretzel. It’s braided into a beautiful wreath, surrounding a pot of cultured butter, and generously topped with Tsar Nicoulai golden reserve caviar, so diners can rip and dip.
It’s also fun how caviar can swing more casual, according to chef Brandon Jew of Mamahuhu in Mill Valley. “For me, it’s really about what umami it’s providing,” Jew says. At his fine-dining restaurant Mister Jiu’s in SF, he serves higher grades of golden and Osetra caviar to VIPs. But at his more casual spinoff Mamahuhu, he decided to have fun with a summer special, and plopped inky black classic caviar on a fried fish sandwich, featuring sea bass, pickled cabbage, and scallions and cilantro. “Caviar has this luxury connotation,” Jew says. “But Tsar Nicoulai is open to having it be available to more people and consumed more. So that was a really fun way to bring caviar to more people.”
And it’s easier than ever to enjoy caviar at home during the holidays, with Tsar Nicoulai stocked in markets across the North Bay. Bolourchi always recommends trying it on its own first, either traditionally with a small mother-of-pearl spoon, or more casually as a bump on the side of your hand, which gently warms the oils. The traditional accompaniments include buckwheat blini, sour cream, chopped onions, and hard- boiled eggs. These days the trend is potato chips, and you can play with spuds in any form, perhaps fries, tots, or mini roasties. The point is some kind of starch, whether pancakes or waffles, sourdough or brioche. Lean into the richness with another fat, like creme fraîche or cultured butter. Balance it with brightness, with finely chopped chives or fresh herbs. It always makes sense to pair fish with fish, from smoked salmon to hamachi crudo, or put eggs on eggs, with a soft scramble or perfect omelet.
On a cozy New Year’s Eve, Bolourchi and his wife like to crack open a tin of the Tsar Nicoulai reserve caviar, which they simply snack on with potato chips, along with a bottle of bubbles — likely the Domaine Carneros Le Reve. “That’s our celebration of the best California has to offer,” he says. “That pairing is just magic.”
