How to Choose Caviar — Species, Grain, and How to Read the Tin
A Buyer's Guide How to Choose Caviar Species, Grain, and How to Read the Tin
By the end of this guide you will be able to pick up any tin, read what is printed on it, and know what you are holding — species, farmed or wild, and country of origin — before you have paid for it.
Caviar is the most intimidating thing in the shop. The tins are small, the prices are not, the names sound like a foreign aristocracy — Beluga, Osetra, Sevruga — and almost everything written about it is written to impress you rather than to make you competent. So most people buy on the brand, the box, or the number on the price tag, and hope.
There is a better way, and it is genuinely learnable in ten minutes. Three things decide what is in front of you: the species, the grain, and the code printed on the tin. The first sets the character, the second is less informative than you have been told, and the third is the only part that cannot be marketed at you — since 2000 every legal tin of caviar in the world carries a standardised label that names the species, says whether the fish was farmed, and gives the country of origin.
At iBuddies we sell one caviar — Siberian Caviar / 西伯利亞鱘魚子醬, farmed Siberian sturgeon roe, in 10 g and 30 g gold tins. We will tell you exactly where it sits on the ladder in section 09, including the part we cannot yet confirm. Everything before that is the reading lesson, and it works in any shop, not just ours.
The species ladder — what you are actually buying
Caviar is sturgeon roe. Which sturgeon is the first and biggest fork in the road: it sets the grain, the colour range, the flavour and most of the price.
The Codex Alimentarius standard for sturgeon caviar covers the whole sturgeon family, not three famous names — so if you have read that "only three species count", that is folklore. What is true is that the three Caspian heritage names sit at the top of the price ladder, and a handful of farmed species do nearly all the work in 2026. Here is the whole board.
| Species | Latin name / code | Grain | Colour | Taste | Where it sits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beluga | Huso huso · HUS | 3–4 mm, the largest, soft-skinned | Pale silver-grey to anthracite | Creamy, buttery, nutty; low brine | The top of the ladder. Hong Kong retail has been seen at HK$5,200 / 30 g (Caviar House & Prunier, via Esquire HK). US import suspended since 2005. |
| Osetra Oscietra / Ossetra |
Acipenser gueldenstaedtii · GUE | Medium | Dark grey through light greenish-grey to amber in older fish | The complex one: marine, green walnut, long finish | High. US specialists list US$105–182 per 28–30 g. |
| Sevruga | Acipenser stellatus · STE | The smallest of the classic three, about 2–3 mm | Light to dark grey | The most assertive and briny | Now scarce, and dearer than Classic Osetra at the same shop (US$150.50 / 28 g). That is scarcity, not fashion. |
| Siberian Baerii We stock this |
Acipenser baerii · BAE | Small-to-medium. Published farm specs run 1.5–2.9 mm, so the range genuinely differs by farm | Dark grey to brownish-black, with green and brown shades explicitly normal | Clean, nutty, a gentle sea note, a firm pop | The accessible tier, and the species most widely farmed in the world. |
| Kaluga hybrid | Huso dauricus × Acipenser schrenckii · DAU × SCH | 2.9–3.3 mm, large and uniform | Dark grey to light golden-green | Buttery, creamy, low salinity | Upper tier; the closest widely available stand-in for Beluga character. |
| White sturgeon | Acipenser transmontanus · TRA | Medium-to-large | Dark grey to light brown | Clean, creamy, nutty, faintly earthy | The mid tier. |
Sizes and colours vary by farm, by grade and with the age of the fish. Third-party prices are as listed by those retailers on 1 September 2026 and are quoted for scale only.
Where Siberian honestly sits. Baerii is not a lesser caviar. It is a different, more accessible one — and it is the species that made caviar buyable by people who do not have a banquet budget, because it matures years earlier than Beluga and farms well almost anywhere in the world.
Serious houses sell Baerii openly as their entry species and say so in their own copy. That is the trade's own positioning, not a put-down — and it is the honest frame for what we sell. It is not Beluga. It is the tier where you can learn what you actually like without spending four figures to find out.
Grain and colour: what your eyes can and cannot tell you
The most expensive myth in caviar is that a trained eye can name the species. It cannot, and the people who enforce the trade say so plainly.
“It is almost impossible to determine the species of origin simply by looking at the caviar, as grain sizes and colours vary with age and within species. DNA analysis is required to determine the species.”
CITES & WWF — caviar labelling brochure
Read that twice, because it dismantles the way most caviar is sold. Your eye grades appearance — evenness, gloss, whether the grains are separate. It does not grade species, and it does not grade tier. Bigger grain is not better grain; grain size mostly tracks the species and the age of the fish, which is why an old Osetra and a young one look like different products.
Codex describes legal caviar as eggs of about one size, evenly and characteristically coloured according to the species, running from light grey to black or light yellow to yellowish grey — and it states that brownish and greenish shades are permissible. So a dark olive-brown or greenish-black tin is textbook-normal, not a defect and not a cheaper grade.
Colour comes from genetics, the age of the fish and the feed. It never comes from dye, because Codex permits no colours in caviar at all. Imitation product, by contrast, usually is dyed — and it loses colour when you rub a grain between your fingertips. That is a real test you can do at the table.
The convention began with Osetra, where older fish give lighter, golden-brown eggs. Treat it as a lightness-and-size shorthand, not a quality certificate — the letters are unregulated, sources disagree on what they mean, and houses freely substitute their own ladder names instead: Classic, Estate, Reserve, Royal, Imperial, Golden. As one US merchant puts it, generally the fancier the grade sounds, the higher the price. Our own price checks bear that out: at one shop, "Imperial" Kaluga costs 2.7 times the same house's "Kaluga Hybrid".
What is regulated is the name. Under Codex the food must be called caviar, optionally with the customary species name; a hybrid must carry the word hybrid; and roe from ovulated eggs must be labelled "caviar from ovulated eggs". Enforcement also uses a blunt screen worth knowing: grains that are not black or grey, that lose colour, or that are much smaller or larger than 2–3 mm are probably not sturgeon caviar at all.
Reading the tin: the CITES code
This is the part nobody teaches you, and it is the only part of the packaging that is not marketing.
Since 2000, every primary container — the tin or jar actually touching the caviar — of any size, wild or farmed, in domestic as well as international trade, must carry a non-reusable CITES label applied by a registered processing or repackaging plant. The label either seals the tin or makes any opening visible, and it cannot be removed undamaged. No compliant label, no legal caviar — full stop.
An illustration of the format only. This is not a photograph of our tin and is not our tin's code.
Three letters. HUS Beluga · GUE Osetra · STE Sevruga · BAE Siberian · TRA white sturgeon · DAU Kaluga. A hybrid is written as two codes joined with an ×.
W wild · C captive-bred · F born in captivity to at least one wild parent · I confiscated. This single letter is the farmed-or-wild answer.
The ISO two-letter country code — where the roe came from, which is not always where the tin was filled or where the brand is from.
The year of harvest, or the year of repackaging.
The registration code of the processing or repackaging plant, issued by that country's CITES Management Authority.
Identifies the batch. Caviar from different species or different lots may not be mixed in one container, so a tin should be one species, one lot.
So a tin reading BAE / C / IT / 2025 is farmed Siberian sturgeon of Italian origin, harvested or repacked in 2025. And here is the reading lesson in one line: branding tells you where a tin was marketed; the code tells you the species, whether it was farmed, and the country of origin. The brochure's own worked examples include caviar of Chinese origin repackaged in Germany, Uruguayan origin repackaged in France, and Italian origin repackaged in France. A tin can be honestly labelled in one language and honestly born in another country.
Sturgeon are CITES-listed, so caviar is imported into Hong Kong under the Protection of Endangered Species of Animals and Plants Ordinance (Cap. 586), administered by the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (漁農自然護理署, AFCD).
For an Appendix II specimen, a valid CITES export permit issued by the exporting country must be produced, and consignments of listed species are inspected by an authorised officer on entry. The maximum penalty for illegal import is a fine of HK$10,000,000 and 10 years' imprisonment — this is customs-grade control, not a formality.
A legitimately imported tin carries its CITES label; a loose, unlabelled scoop of "caviar" does not. Mislabelling is common enough worldwide that DNA and isotope studies keep finding cheaper species sold as dearer ones — which is precisely why the code, and not the story on the front, is what you read.
Everything else printed on the tin
Six more things are worth finding before you buy — and each one answers a question the front label is trying to avoid.
| What to look for | What it actually tells you |
|---|---|
| The Latin name | Look for Acipenser baerii, not just "sturgeon caviar". Codex allows the identification code or the scientific name where a fish has no settled common name — so the binomial is the precise answer, and the vague one is a choice. |
| The source letter in the CITES code | C, F or W is what tells you farmed or wild. The marketing on the front does not, and it is not required to. |
| Salt, and the word malossol | Codex sets caviar at 3–5 g of salt per 100 g, full stop. Malossol (малосол, "little salt") is a trade word for the lightly salted end of that band — it is not a legal grade and certifies nothing on its own. If you have read that salt percentage is a four-tier grading system, it is not. |
| Pasteurised or fresh | Fresh (unpasteurised) keeps texture and complexity and lasts roughly 4–6 weeks unopened; pasteurised holds up to about 6 months sealed and refrigerated, at some cost in firmness. Always defer to the tin's own date. |
| Date and lot number | Codex requires the name of the food, the lot marking, the species and the storage instructions to appear on the container itself — not only on an outer sleeve you will throw away. |
| Additives | Codex permits no colours and no texturising agents in caviar at all. Separately, boric acid and borax — the traditional Caspian preservative, still met in older-style product — are not permitted preservatives in Hong Kong under the Preservatives in Food Regulation (Cap. 132BD). It is a legality and a market difference: a tin made for one market is not automatically saleable in another. |
The checks you make with the tin open
Codex defines what counts as a defective tin. Translated out of standards language, it is a five-point check that takes about thirty seconds.
Grains glossy rather than dull or dry, of about one size, sitting separately instead of clumped into a paste. No free liquid pooling, no broken shells.
Tilt the spoon. The grains should roll and separate. If the outer membranes tear as they part, or the whole spoonful smears, that is a consistency defect.
Press gently against the palate rather than chewing. You want a clean burst, then cream. A skin so hard it will not chew easily, or a grain that collapses to mush, is out of spec.
Clean sea and nut. Not fishy, not sour, not metallic, not oxidised. Codex lists "taste of feed" as a defect specific to farmed fish — good farmed caviar should not taste of the pond.
Remnants of membrane or streaks of secreted fat in the tin count as objectionable matter under Codex. In plain terms, it is careless sieving.
Wild or farmed
Short section, because the numbers do the arguing.
The date the whole sturgeon family came into force on CITES Appendix II — the listing that created the labelling system in section 03.
Of caviar in legal international trade now comes from aquaculture. The only country legally exporting wild-caught caviar is the USA.
Estimated world production in 2016, from about 48 countries and some 2,200 farms.
Every one of the world's remaining wild sturgeon species is at risk of extinction (IUCN, 2022) — the most endangered group of species on earth.
Sturgeon were listed on CITES Appendix II, in force on 1 April 1998 — that listing is what created the tin label you learned to read in section 03. Since then the industry has moved almost entirely onto farms: more than 95% of the caviar in legal international trade now comes from aquaculture.
Farming is now the industry, and it is a big one. In 2016, about 48 countries and some 2,200 farms produced an estimated 350-plus tonnes of caviar worldwide. The biggest producers are China, the EU (Italy, France, Germany, Spain and Bulgaria), the USA, Russia, Israel and Uruguay — which is the map sitting behind the two-letter country code on the tin.
The wild side of the ledger reads very differently. IUCN's 2022 reassessment found that 100% of the world's 26 remaining sturgeon species are at risk of extinction — up from 85% in 2009 — that 17 of them are Critically Endangered, that the Caspian Beluga is among them, and that the Yangtze sturgeon is now Extinct in the Wild. IUCN describes sturgeon as more critically endangered than any other group of species. The USA is the only country with legal export of wild-caught caviar, from stocks that recovered enough to be harvested sustainably.
Beluga is the clearest case. The USA listed Beluga as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 2004, issued a special rule in March 2005, and suspended imports of Caspian Beluga caviar and meat in October 2005, which is why it simply does not appear in the American price lists we checked.
Which leads to the only sensible conclusion for a buyer in 2026: farmed is not the compromise. Farmed is the product. Wild Caspian caviar is not something you can responsibly buy today, the legal trade is essentially all aquaculture, and the farmed species have had two decades to get very good at this. Read the source letter, buy the C, and enjoy it without an asterisk.
Storing it, and putting it on the table
Caviar is not difficult to keep. It is just unforgiving about two things: temperature and metal.
Keep it in the coldest part of the fridge, around 0–4 °C, and never in the door. Never the freezer: freezing ruptures the grains and the texture does not come back.
Unopened: roughly 4–6 weeks for fresh, up to about 6 months for pasteurised. Once opened, 2–3 days — re-seal with the original lid, or press film onto the surface to keep air off. The tin's own date always wins.
Nest the tin in crushed ice in a glass or ceramic bowl and leave it there for the whole service. Warm caviar goes slack and loses its pop within minutes.
Blini or plain toast, unsalted crackers, boiled or crisped potato, crème fraîche or sour cream, chopped egg, chives. To drink: chilled champagne, or vodka straight from the freezer.
Do not use a metal spoon. Metal can leave a metallic taste, which is why caviar is served with mother-of-pearl, bone, horn, glass, ceramic or wood. If a nacre spoon is not in the drawer, a plastic tasting spoon beats the good silver every time.
How much you actually need
Do not buy by the gram. Buy by the number of bites — it is the conversion that makes tin sizes make sense.
| Amount | What it actually is |
|---|---|
| 10 g | A taste. Two to four spoon-sized bites for one person, or one bite each for two. |
| 15 g per person | The working canapé share — the right number when caviar is one of several things on the table. |
| 30 g per person | The restaurant course: about 3–4 mother-of-pearl spoonfuls. |
| The occasion | What to buy | Why |
|---|---|---|
| First time buying a tin | 10 g · HK$128 | Low commitment. This is a taste, not a course — and that is the honest way to describe it. |
| Two people, a canapé course at home | 30 g · HK$198 | 15 g each — the canapé standard, with enough for a second bite. |
| One person, a proper course | 30 g · HK$198 | The fine-dining serving: 3–4 spoonfuls, eaten properly rather than rationed. |
| Four people, caviar as the opener | 2 × 30 g | 15 g each, with nobody counting spoons. |
| Four people, caviar as the centrepiece | 4 × 30 g at HK$150 each | 30 g each — the full course for everyone at the table, at our lowest per-tin price. |
| Gifting | 30 g, or four as a set | 10 g reads as a sample. 30 g reads as a gift. |
What we stock, honestly
Having spent eight sections telling you to read the tin instead of the marketing, it would be poor form to hand you marketing now.
Siberian Caviar / 西伯利亞鱘魚子醬 — farmed Siberian sturgeon roe, in gold tins.
Where it sits. Baerii is the accessible tier — the species that made caviar buyable, because it matures years earlier than Beluga and farms well almost anywhere. It is not Beluga, and we are not going to pretend it is. What we will say is that the price is unusually low for the tier: the cheapest Hong Kong Baerii we could find online on 1 September 2026 was HK$374 for 30 g, and a US specialist lists Baerii at US$85 per 28 g. We sit well under both. We are not claiming our tin matches a European grand-maison Baerii — that is a claim nobody can evidence for you. We are claiming it is correctly what it says it is, at a price that lets you learn the category.
The grains. Dark olive-brown to greenish-black, small-to-medium, glossy and well separated. This is the thing customers ask us about most, so to repeat section 02: under Codex, brownish and greenish shades are permissible. That colour is textbook-normal for the species, not a fault and not a lesser grade.
Our tin carries Japanese lettering reading 養殖チョウザメ — farmed sturgeon. That confirms it is farmed. It does not tell you the country of origin, because branding never does. Only the CITES code does, and we are not going to guess at it in public just because a guess would read better.
So here is this article's own lesson applied to us: message us, and we will read you the code off the tin you would actually receive — species, source letter, country of origin, year. If we are going to teach you to demand that from a shop, we should be the first shop that gives it to you.
On availability. Caviar comes in and out of our freezer room in small lots. Before you plan a dinner around it, message us and we will tell you what is actually there and in which size — that is a five-minute answer, and it beats a disappointing delivery.
Ask us to read you the code
Tell us the occasion and how many people are eating, and we will tell you which tin and what is in stock — plus the CITES code on the tin you would receive. Free delivery on orders over HK$800.
Order Siberian Caviar on WhatsApp →Or browse the rest of the table: our appetiser collection.
References & Resources
This is a culinary buying guide. Standards, codes, conservation status and Hong Kong import and food-law points are drawn from the primary sources below; third-party prices are as listed by those retailers on 1 September 2026 and are quoted for scale only. Last reviewed: 1 September 2026.
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Codex Alimentarius — CXS 291-2010, Standard for Sturgeon Caviar. Salt range, the permitted colour range, the ban on colours and texturising agents, labelling, storage temperature and the defect list.
https://www.fao.org/input/download/standards/11516/CXS_291e.pdf -
CITES & WWF — Sturgeons and Caviar: the basics of the legal caviar trade and caviar labelling (Jahrl, 2018). The universal labelling system and the six-part code.
https://danube-sturgeons.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Caviar-Labelling-Brochure_EN-1.pdf -
CITES — A Brief History of Sturgeons & CITES. The 1998 Appendix II listing.
https://cites.org/eng/prog/sturgeon/history.shtml -
IUCN (2022) — sturgeon Red List reassessment. The status of the 26 remaining wild species.
https://iucn.org/content/sturgeon-more-critically-endangered-any-other-group-species -
Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (漁農自然護理署, AFCD) — guide to the import of endangered species, Cap. 586. How CITES-listed goods such as caviar are controlled on import into Hong Kong.
https://www.afcd.gov.hk/tc_chi/conservation/con_end/con_end_lc/con_end_lc_guide/files/1_Import_Cap586c_18.pdf -
Centre for Food Safety (食物安全中心, CFS) — use of boric acid and borax in food, Preservatives in Food Regulation (Cap. 132BD). Borax is a non-permitted preservative in Hong Kong.
https://www.cfs.gov.hk/english/programme/programme_rafs/programme_rafs_fa_02_06.html
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