Can Iran’s black caviar make a comeback in Trump’s America?
Iran’s black caviar may once-again take off in the United States, where the first shipment of Iranian caviar in nearly a decade was received last year
Nasser Meshkin Azarian took a careful nibble, letting the salty, grainy texture roll across his tongue. He smiled and washed it down with a sip of cool water.
“I give it an 82 or 83” out of 100, Azarian said. At the retail price of US$80 an ounce in Iran, it was an expensive bite. But beluga caviar is for discerning palates.
“Iranian caviar has a fantastic reputation all around the world,” said Azarian, the chairman of Bahoo Caviar, a distributor in Tehran. “It is only going to grow.”
In recent years, China has accounted for much of the world’s caviar production, although its product is widely seen as inferior to Iranian and Russian eggs. Farms in California also have begun to produce black caviar.
As Iran’s economy tries to rebound from years of harsh international sanctions, producers of black caviar – that salt-cured delicacy associated with the rich and famous, with a price tag to match – are also eyeing a comeback.
Once among Iran’s most famous exports, the industry nearly collapsed because of trade restrictions and an international clampdown on the capture of sturgeon from the Caspian Sea. The long, prehistoric fish, whose glittery, beadlike eggs make the choicest caviar, had been driven nearly to extinction by overfishing.
Now, dozens of Iranian producers are raising sturgeon legally on fish farms, just as the 2015 nuclear agreement Iran signed with six world powers has slowly reopened foreign markets to Iranian products.
After the United States lifted an embargo on Iranian goods in January 2016, the first shipment of Iranian caviar in nearly a decade reached the US last year: a modest 18 pounds of the prized beluga variety, some of which ended up for sale at stores frequented by Iranian expatriates in Los Angeles and other cities.
The shipment was worth about US$16,000, or about as much as Iran’s US$41 billion oil and gas industry generates in 12 seconds. Caviar alone, no matter how costly, is not going to resuscitate Iran’s moribund economy.