Spanish Wine from Spain

Spanish caviar and something fishy in Spain!

In an effort to break into the lucrative caviar market, sturgeons are being bred in captivity in many countries, and Spain is no exception. Indeed, a century ago the Ybarra family (still a well-known brand of olive oil, mayonnaise, and other quality products) had a Spanish caviar processing plant on the Guadalquivir river south of Seville. The sturgeon were autoctonous to the Guadalquivir river and were caught using baited hooks placed on the river bed. I never got to try the stuff, obviously, but, as with all good things, it came to an end when overfishing did for the poor sturgeon.

More recently a new project has started in the Bahia de Cádiz, although time will tell whether the young sturgeon released there will hang around long enough in the Bahia de Cádiz to be caught – and be disgorged of their roe. This is additional to the already existing captive sturgeon project that has been developed at Rio Frío (Granada) over the last ten years, which produces just enough Spanish caviar to meet demand, albeit the prices of which increase every season.

A somewhat more humane effort to launch caviar onto an always willing market is coincidentally similarly centred on Cádiz, and is known as Blanc Caviar.  However Blanc Caviar is made of – you would never guess – snails’ eggs!

Snails mate once a year, and 80% of them die on the job, allegedly from stress.  This has probably got something to do with the fact that they are hermaphrodites, so possibly the act of deciding whether it will be Mr/Mrs Snail or Mr/Mrs Snail that has to act out one or other of the roles – takes its toll.

In any event, the egg carrier goes off to deposit his/her eggs in a hole in the ground and, before you can say caviar, along comes Mr Egg Collector who digs them up, takes them to be sterilised and sorted (one by one!).  He then deposits them in a salt bath prior to putting them into glass jars.

Although the developer of the process, Blas Hervías, a gynaecologist’s son(!!) claims to have spent €200,000 getting the product to market.  Mind you, Blas Hervías will soon get his money back – providing he sells enough jars at €90 for 50 gms…

RELEVANT INFO: Cosas de Comé – photo in text courtesy of Cosas de Comé