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lucrative market for caviar induced European vendors to look for local
sources. The French found enough sturgeon in the Gironde area, north of
Bordeaux, to establish a thriving caviar industry. Its very success, however, led
to its demise. So much caviar was produced that on the eve of World War I,
the delicacy was selling at a price only slightly higher than the cost of
a baguette in Paris. (ezcaviar.com) The abundant supply was the result of over fishing which,
in turn, caused the virtual extinction of the French sturgeon.
In
Germany
, it was the sturgeon from the
Elbe
River
near
Hamburg
that became the source of the local caviar. It enabled the firm of
Dieckmann & Hansen (D&H) not only to satisfy the German demand,
but to reach for markets in England,
Sweden, France, and Austria, thus becoming the first multinational caviar dealer. As in
France, however, the German sturgeon supply was soon depleted by over fishing.
The problem was confounded here by the industrial pollution of nearby
factories which diminished the oxygen needed both by the sturgeon and
their river food. D&H began looking elsewhere for surgeon. (Dieckmann
& Hansen, 2004)
Sturgeon was not a rare fish. It
could be found in many places, all in the northern hemisphere. It has long
been familiar to man. Its images are carved in the ancient Egyptian
temples, and many Greek classics wrote about it. ((Ramade, 1999: 8) As
Cicero complained, sturgeon has always been too pricey because it is hard
to catch; a jar of sturgeon meat cost as much as one hundred sheep in the
second century B.C. (Walker, 2002) Sturgeon was also dear in ancient
China, where its caviar was enjoyed as early as the tenth century. Even
before that, it is said, the Persians living near the Kura
River, north of the Caspian, became the first people to eat caviar, believing
that it was a medicine for many diseases as well as a source of energy. (ezcaviar.com)
Medieval
Europe
did know how to make caviar, but valued sturgeon as a delicacy. The
Europeans who settled in
America, however, disliked the sturgeon. It was a favorite of the natives. As the
fish was cheap, it was later used to feed the slaves. The immigrants who
arrived from
Europe
in the middle of the 19th Century
were poor and became additional consumers of the inexpensive sturgeon
meat. It was now called “Albany Beef”, since it was caught in the
Hudson river
. (What's Cooking
America
) Turning the sturgeon's roe into caviar, however, required the processing
expertise which German dealers, led by D&H, brought to America
.
By 1870 those dealers were shipping caviar to
Hamburg
from the sturgeon caught in the
Delaware River
. (United Press International, 2000) On that river's banks in
New Jersey a new boomtown, appropriately named Caviar, emerged as the center of the
caviar industry in the United States. In the 1880s, more caviar was made here than in any other country. Most
of the American caviar was exported to
Europe
. Locally, the only notable impact was that a few New York
bars offered free caviar in the hope that its salt would cause customers
to order more drinks. (Nalley, 2002; Robins, 1994)
In less than three decades, the sturgeon in the East Coast
of the
U.S.
met the same inevitable fate as those in
Germany
and
France; over fishing eliminated its stocks, assisted by the oil slick from Philadelphia's emerging petroleum industry. The fishermen had already begun moving to
the
Great Lakes
and the Pacific coast. The future was bleak there too. The stocks in Lake
Erie and
California
's
Columbia River
were exhausted in a decade. When the catches in the Sacramento River also
declined precipitously, California
banned the commercial fishing of sturgeon in 1902. The main culprit again
was unbridled fishing, while in the
Great Lakes, the pollution of the runoff from the sawmills was also a factor.
D&H did not abandon the U.S.; in 1912 it opened the first American caviar retail shop, Romanoff, in the lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. To obtain caviar, however, D&H, turned toward Russia, first to the Amur River in Siberia but soon to the Caspian Sea, now the last place where sturgeon could be caught in large numbers. There are twenty seven species of sturgeon. (Shoumatoff) The Caspian Sea has been the best habitat for the greatest number and variety, including the three species most coveted for their eggs: beluga sturgeon which produces caviar with the same name, Russian or Persian sturgeon which produces the osetra caviar, and stellate sturgeon which produces the sevruga caviar. A moderately saline water, a special algae, and a mild temperature combine to make the Caspian Sea a singular environment for caviar. (Avakian, 1992)
On the eve of World War II, D&H was the main foreign producer of caviar in the Caspian port of Astrakhan, the center of the Russian caviar industry. Every year it exported 100 tons of Caviar to Europe. (Dieckmann & Hansen 2004) This large quantity, however, was a small fraction of the caviar made in that city. Most of the Russian caviar was consumed locally. With that robust market in mind, a certain Armenian caviar producer, Stepan Matinovic Lianozov, had succeeded in securing an exclusive concession for fishing in the portion of the Caspian Sea which was still outside Russia.
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