How To Use It: a little vodka best served with a lot of caviar

“Caviar, the salted roe of the sturgeon, is the animal kingdom’s truffle,” writes Harold McGee. 

The delicacy has experienced a boom in popularity in recent years, with the caviar bump — a portion of quality sturgeon caviar dabbed onto the back of one’s hand — becoming something of a latter day little luxury in uncertain times.

But a little caviar, as the writer A.A. Gill once wrote, is rarely enough.

“The thing about caviar is, you can’t muck about with little bits of it,” he wrote. “You’ve got to have a lot, or none at all.”

And if you are going to do caviar, you’re going to want to do it right, and that means pairing it with an appropriate liquid accompaniment. You could do as Winston Churchill was reported to have done and pair it with vintage champagne. But if you truly want the caviar to shine? Well, there’s no better excuse for a bracingly cold, classic Martini made with a quality vodka — like we’ve done here with Beluga Noble Vodka. 

Below, we’ll take a brief look at just what caviar is, a little history, and how best to serve it with Beluga Noble Vodka.

A brief history of caviar

Harold McGee in On Food & Cooking suggests that caviar, made by lightly salting roe, first makes an appearance around the year 1200.

McGee writes further that, up until 1900, sturgeon were “common in many large rivers in the northern hemisphere,” and caviar was plentiful enough that that it wasn’t considered as the delicacy that it is today. But around 1900, thanks to overfishing, caviar became rarer to get — and more expensive.

The beluga sturgeon, for example, can take up to 20 years to mature, and used to grow up to seven metres in length.

Today, much of the quality caviar — whether that’s from beluga sturgeon, ossetra sturgeon or others — is farmed, as the populations of the fish, in places like the Caspian Sea, are critically endangered.

Types of caviar

We’re talking about true caviar here, which is to say, caviar made from the sturgeon fish. There are caviars made from salmon roe, lumpfish roe, and other swimmy things, and they can be delicious, but nothing is quite like true caviar.

Caviar differs depending on the species of sturgeon it comes from: beluga caviar, from the beluga sturgeon, is the rarest kind, with larger roe, a very thin membrane — the caviar melts, as opposed to pops. 

Caviar from the Ossetra sturgeon is slight smaller than beluga, and can range in colour from dark brown to light amber, with a complex, butty, briny flavour.

Sevruga caviar is more accessible, and more affordable, as the sevruga sturgeon matures faster (around seven years). The beads of caviar tend to be smaller, and green-black in colour and the most briny in flavour, generally considered the least complex in flavour.

How to Martini with caviar

You’ve heard that the purest way to eat caviar is from one’s hand, so there are no off smells or tastes that can get in the way of the subtleties of the caviar. That may be true — one is supposed to smell the back of one’s hand to reset the nose when tasting spirits, too.

Whatever truth there is to that, it is suggested that fine caviar not be spooned with silver or stainless steel, as they can impart a metallic taste to the caviar. Instead use a spoon made from mother of pearl, a wooden spoon, or better yet — a spoon made from gold.

Now, you can enjoy your caviar with a quality vodka like Beluga Noble Vodka served straight up from the freezer, if that’s your thing, but here we like a dry Vodka Martini. Use dry vermouth sparingly, as you want the caviar to shine — the trick here is to have your Beluga Noble Vodka chilled, your glass fresh from the freezer, and your caviar ready to go. Garnish with lemon peel, expressed and discarded, if that’s your thing. 

Beluga Noble Vodka Martini

Ingredients:

• 50ml Beluga Noble Vodka
• 10ml dry vermouth
• a dash of orange bitters

Method:

Stir down all ingredients until bracingly cold. Strain into a chilled Martini glass. Garnish with an expressed lemon zest. Serve with the best quality caviar you can get your hands on.

How is caviar made?

The sturgeon are caught, then stunned, before an incision in the belly of the fish is made and the roe sacs removed before the sturgeon is killed and the rest of the fish is used for other purposes. The eggs are loosened, then sorted and graded by the caviar maker, before being lightly salted — between three and 10 percent — and drained.

About Beluga Noble Vodka

Beluga Noble Vodka is made with 100 percent winter wheat, and filtered through birch charcoal and quartz, with a final silver filtration stage. Finally, the spirit is rested 30 days before bottling.

Tasting Notes
The nose is neutral on first glance, but opens to reveal some light vanilla and citrus notes. This leads through to a medium-full bodied palate, with some warming spice and lingering vanilla. This is well balanced spirit that will stand up strong in a cocktail like the Martini.