Uruguay roes its way to epicurean success (Caviar- AFP gets corny)

BAYGORRIA, Uruguay (AFP) - Uruguayan caviar, once a local family's long-shot business venture, has swum its way onto the epicurean map and is poised to become the toast of the world's gastronomes. ADVERTISEMENT

The idea was spawned just about a decade ago, when Russian satellite images showed that Uruguay could be an ideal place to breed sturgeon.

Soon after, the Alcaldes became the first family in the southern hemisphere to produce caviar. Now they are trying to corner the world market through their company Black River Sturgeons -- ERN by its Spanish acronym.)

"Since 2000, we've been exporting close to a ton and a half per year -- 95 percent to the United States and the rest to Europe and other countries" in South America, said Javier Alcalde, who took over ERN after his father died in 2003.

The amounts "aren't huge, but under our new plan -- to be launched November 16 -- we'll become the world's top producers of farmed Osetra caviar and third overall in caviar production behind Iran and Russia," Alcalde told AFP.

Osetra, extracted from Siberian or Russian sturgeon, is second in quality behind Beluga, the largest and only predator in the sturgeon family, and the most difficult to farm.

ERN plans to boost its production of caviar to 15 tonnes per year by 2008. To get there, it struck up a "strategic alliance" two years ago with a minority investor (20 percent) from France: Jacques Olle.

With a half-million-dollar investment, ERN facilities on Uruguay's Rio Negro were renovated and enlarged.

" Jacques is much like my father; he saw the place two or three times and then took the plunge," said Alcalde.

Getting the American market to accept caviar "made in Uruguay" took a while, but "now it's considered the world's best farmed caviar," he said, noting that there were 14 other caviar farms in France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

Even the prestigious firm Petrossian was astonished when, in a taste test, it was unable to distinguish ERN from the best Russian caviar.

It is a success story 10 years and a family saga in the making. ERN founder Walter Alcalde made initial contacts in Russia through his fishing company.

"After the fall of the Soviet Union, the KGB-controlled technology for producing caviar finally emerged from Russia in the early 1990s. Then, satellite research showed that Uruguay had the best environment south of the equator for raising sturgeon," Alcalde said.

Armed with the study results, Walter Alcalde chased after his dream. "He had this vision, but most people thought we were crazy," Javier Alcalde said.

With the help of technicians from a Russian laboratory in Astrakhan, the Alcaldes learned all there was to know about farming sturgeon, including their dietary habits and how biopsies determine the best time to extract the precious roe.

"At the time, a business like ours seemed out of the question. The production cycle was too long, six to eight years before the females reached maturity, and the market openings seemed very small compared to the strong buyer markets French farmers had access to," said ERN managing director Eduardo Primavesi.

Little by little, and despite weird incidents like when a police officer, after retrieving a fish that had broken out of its containment area, wrote a report about a "fugitive sturgeon," the Alcaldes were able to stabilize their production.

Currently, the law of supply and demand is on ERN's side, with caviar prices bounding to record levels -- 4,000 to 5,000 dollars per kilo of Beluga and 2,500 dollars for ERN Osetra in the United States -- after pollution, poaching and overfishing decimated wild sturgeon in the Caspian Sea.

From 1,000 tonnes harvested by the Soviet Union alone in 1980, caviar production has dropped dramatically to around 120 tonnes a year between Russia and Iran.

Black River Sturgeons (ERN) manager Hugo Alcalde holds a Siberian sturgeon at his fish farm near Montevideo. Uruguayan caviar, once a local family's long-shot business venture, has swum its way onto the epicurean map and is poised to become the toast of the world's gastronomes.(AFP/Miguel Rojo)

No "martin_fierROE" jokes, if you please.

A lucrative business opportunity is in their laps.

Now starts the countdown until the Socialist government there screws it all up.

MMMMmmm...a bit of finely chopped onion, some minced hard boiled egg, delightful spoon of caviar on a toasted cracker and washed down with very chilled wodka!

Dee-Lightful!

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