How to Read a Caviar Tin

Two tins sit side by side. Same weight, same species, same shop. One costs twice the other. Nothing on the surface explains why, and the person selling them is not always in a hurry to tell you.

This is the moment most people give up and buy on price or on brand. There is a better way. Almost everything you need to judge a tin is printed on it, in a vocabulary that takes about ten minutes to learn and then serves you for life.

Here is that vocabulary.

Start with the species, not the name

Marketing names travel freely. "Royal", "Imperial", "Prestige" and "Reserve" mean whatever the house wants them to mean. The species does not move.

Four species account for most of the fine caviar you will encounter:

• Beluga (Huso huso): the largest sturgeon, the largest eggs, the longest wait. A female may take fifteen to twenty years to produce roe. Grey to almost pale silver, famously delicate.
• Oscietra (Acipenser gueldenstaedtii): the connoisseur's choice, and the most variable. Twelve to fifteen years to maturity. Ranges from deep brown-grey through bronze to a rare amber gold, with a nutty character that Beluga does not have.
• Sevruga (Acipenser stellatus): smaller eggs, more assertive flavour, faster to mature at seven to ten years. Historically the value option, unfairly so.
• Siberian Baerii (Acipenser baerii): the modern workhorse of quality aquaculture. Mature in six to eight years, which is why it is more affordable, and at its best it is genuinely excellent rather than merely acceptable.

If the tin does not name a species, ask. A house that will not tell you the species is telling you something else.

Calibre: the size of the pearl

Calibre is the diameter of a single egg, and it is the number that most often separates those two tins on the counter.

Rough ranges by species:

Species	Typical calibre
Beluga	3.2 to 4.0 mm
Oscietra	2.8 to 3.5 mm
Siberian Baerii	2.4 to 2.9 mm
Sevruga	2.0 to 2.5 mm

Larger eggs command more money for two honest reasons and one dishonest one. Honestly: a larger egg comes from an older fish, which means more years of feeding, tending and risk before a single gram is sold. And a larger egg carries more liquid, so the "pop" is more pronounced and the release of flavour more dramatic.

The dishonest reason is simply that size photographs well.

Do not confuse calibre with quality. A perfectly cured, impeccably fresh Baerii at 2.6 mm will beat a tired Beluga at 3.6 mm every time. Calibre tells you what the experience will feel like, not how good it will be.

The cure: what "malossol" actually means

Malossol is Russian for "little salt". It is the most important word on most tins and the least understood.

Salt does two jobs in caviar: it preserves, and it draws out the flavour compounds in the egg. Too little and the roe spoils within days. Too much and the salt is all you taste.

• Malossol means a cure of roughly 3 to 5 percent salt by weight, most often around 3.5 percent. Short shelf life, four to six weeks refrigerated, and the truest expression of the roe.
• Salted or semi-preserved sits higher, typically 5 to 8 percent. It travels better and forgives more, at the cost of nuance.
• Pasteurised roe has been heat-treated in the jar. It will keep unopened for months, sometimes years. It is a different product: firmer, duller, and perfectly reasonable for cooking or for a first purchase where you cannot guarantee the cold chain. It is not what a tasting is for.

If a tin says malossol and also promises a twelve-month shelf life, one of those two claims is doing something unusual. Ask which.

Colour grades, and why lighter is not automatically better

The traditional grading marks, 000, 00 and 0, refer to colour, not size, though the two often correlate because older fish tend to produce both larger and lighter eggs.

• 000: the lightest, a pale silver-grey
• 00: medium grey
• 0: darker grey to near-black

For Beluga, the palest grades have historically been the most prized, and priced accordingly. For Oscietra, the sought-after end of the range is amber to golden, and a genuinely gold Oscietra is rare enough to justify its reputation.

But treat colour as a preference, not a verdict. Some of the most complete Oscietra we pour is a deep bronze that no grading chart would rank at the top. Colour is where connoisseurship most often shades into fashion.

The origin code, and how to decode it

Since 1998, caviar traded across borders has been required to carry a CITES labelling code. This is the single most useful thing on the tin, and almost nobody reads it.

It looks like this:

HUS / C / IT / 2026 / 0042 / 118

Reading left to right:

1. Species code, three letters. HUS is Huso huso, Beluga. GUE is Oscietra, BAE is Siberian, STE is Sevruga.
2. Source code, one letter. W is wild-caught. C is captive-bred. F is born in captivity of wild-caught parents.
3. Country of origin, the two-letter ISO code, where the roe was harvested and processed.
4. Year of harvest, four digits.
5. Registration code of the processing plant.
6. Lot number, which ties the tin to a specific batch.

Two things to look at immediately. The source code: for almost every species you will meet today, this should read C. Wild Caspian caviar has been effectively off the legal market for years, and a W on a modern Beluga tin deserves a very long conversation. The year of harvest: caviar is not wine. A harvest year two seasons old on a fresh malossol tin means the roe has been sitting somewhere.

What the tin cannot tell you

Three things matter enormously and never appear on the label.

The cold chain. Caviar wants to live between minus 2 and 0 degrees Celsius, from the plant to your hand. One warm afternoon in transit undoes a decade of husbandry. Ask how it shipped.

Time since tinning. Not the harvest year, the actual date the roe went into that tin. Good houses will tell you without hesitation.

Who made the call on the salt. Curing is a judgement, made by a master on the day, on that batch. It is the reason two tins from the same farm and the same season can be different products.

Opening the tin: the five-second assessment

The label got you here. Now the roe speaks for itself.

Look at the separation. Eggs should sit as distinct spheres. A glossy uniform mass that moves as one has either been over-handled or is breaking down.

Look for liquid. A little sheen is right. A pool at the edge of the tin means eggs are rupturing.

Smell it. Clean, marine, faintly sweet. If the first note is "fish", the tin is past its moment. Fresh caviar barely announces itself.

Press gently with a mother-of-pearl spoon. The eggs should resist, then release. Mush means age or a heavy hand somewhere upstream.

Taste on the back of the hand. A half-teaspoon, warmed a moment against your skin. You are checking for a finish that goes somewhere. Great caviar keeps developing for ten seconds after you swallow. Ordinary caviar stops at the salt.

Questions worth asking before you buy

Five questions. Any good supplier answers all five easily, and the way they answer tells you as much as the answers.

1. What species is this, and where was it farmed?
2. What is the salt percentage?
3. When was it tinned?
4. Has it been pasteurised?
5. How has it been kept since it arrived with you?

A house that welcomes these questions is a house that has good answers.

Keeping it at home

You have bought well. Do not undo it in your own fridge.

• Store at the coldest part of the refrigerator, ideally minus 2 to 0 degrees Celsius, which for most domestic fridges means the very back of the bottom shelf.
• Keep the tin unopened until service. Oxygen is the enemy.
• Never freeze fresh malossol. Ice crystals rupture the membrane and you will pour out what you paid for.
• Once opened, finish within two to three days, with the surface pressed flat and the tin sealed.
• Serve from the tin, on crushed ice, with a mother-of-pearl, bone or horn spoon. Never metal.

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The short version

If you remember nothing else: species tells you the character, calibre tells you the texture, the cure tells you the honesty, and the CITES code tells you the truth. Price tells you comparatively little.

Read the tin, ask the five questions, and buy from people who are pleased you asked.

Every tin in our collection carries a full origin code, a tinning date and a stated cure. Explore the range, or start with the Taster Pack and put this guide to work across three species in a single sitting.