Kaluga Queen is a Chinese brand of

caviar Caviar or caviare is a food consisting of salt-cured roe of the family Acipenseridae. Caviar is considered a delicacy and is eaten as a garnish or spread. Traditionally, the term caviar refers only to roe from wild sturgeon in the Caspi ...

made by the caviar company Hangzhou Qiandaohu Xunlong Sci-Tech Co., Ltd. The company produces 60 tonnes of

annually, making it the largest producer of caviar in the world and responsible for 60% of world production. Kaluga Queen supplies caviar for 21 of the 26 3-starred

Michelin Michelin ( , ), in full ("General Company of the Michelin Enterprises P.L.S."), is a French multinational tyre manufacturing company based in Clermont-Ferrand in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes '' région'' of France. It is the second largest t ...

restaurants in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

History

Kaluga Queen was founded in 2003 by Hangzhou Qiandaohu Xunlong Sci-Tech Co., Ltd., a caviar company affiliated with the

Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences The Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences (CAFS) (; Pinyin: Zhōngguó shuǐchǎn Kēxuéyánjiūyuàn) is a large fisheries research institute. It was founded in 1978 under the Ministry of Agriculture in the People's Republic of China. It is a le ...

. The caviar processing facility was constructed in 2004 and the Kaluga Queen brand created in the following year. Several years after the founding of the company,

CITES CITES (shorter acronym for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, also known as the Washington Convention) is a multilateral treaty to protect endangered plants and animals from the threats of inte ...

imposed a severe curtailment of wild caviar from the

Caspian Sea The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, described as the List of lakes by area, world's largest lake and usually referred to as a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia: east of the Caucasus, ...

region, creating an opportunity for caviar farming startups to take market share from the traditional caviar powers of

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

and

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

Production

The sturgeon are farmed at

Qiandao Lake Qiandao Lake () is a man-made freshwater lake located in Chun'an County, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China, that was formed after the completion of the Qiantang River, Xin'an River Hydroelectricity, hydroelectric station in 1959. Geography Qi ...

, a man-made lake surrounded by little in the way of industry. There are about 50,000 sturgeon maturing at the farm. At age 6 when the sex of the sturgeon becomes apparent, the males are separated from females for immediate processing while the females continue to be nurtured in pens. The mature sturgeon are shipped in water-filled trucks from the lake to a processing facility in

Quzhou Quzhou is a prefecture-level city in western Zhejiang province, People's Republic of China. Sitting on the upper course of the Qiantang River, it borders Hangzhou to the north, Jinhua to the east, Lishui to the southeast, and the provinces of F ...

. At the facility the sturgeon's eggs are taken out and "checked, re-rinsed, salted, and sealed in tins in less than 10 minutes". The sturgeon without eggs is smoked and exported mostly to

. The company raises 5 different species of sturgeon each producing a different variety including

beluga Beluga may refer to: Animals *Beluga (sturgeon) * Beluga whale Vehicles * Airbus Beluga, a large transport airplane * Airbus BelugaXL, a larger transport airplane * Beluga-class submarine, a class of Russian SSA diesel-electric submarine * U ...

Reception

Kaluga Queen's caviar has been favorably reviewed. A writer for ''

Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly news magazine based in New York City. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely distributed during the 20th century and has had many notable editors-in-chief. It is currently co-owned by Dev P ...

'' praised the brand's Schrenckii caviar as having peerless "power and intensity". French chef

Alain Ducasse Alain Ducasse (; born 13 September 1956) is a French-born Monégasque chef. He operates a number of restaurants, including Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester, which holds three stars (the top rating) in the Michelin Guide. Early life and career D ...

serves it at his portfolio of restaurants. Media coverage of Kaluga Queen has often focused on the Chinese origins of the brand but not the quality, noting the lack of association between China and caviar. A piece in ''that's'' magazine noted that while Kaluga Queen is "hugely successful", the brand still finds it difficult to gain recognition in the international community. At the

2016 G20 Hangzhou summit The 2016 G20 Hangzhou summit was the eleventh meeting of the Group of Twenty (G20). It was held in the city of Hangzhou, Zhejiang. It was the first ever G20 summit to be hosted in China and the second in an Asian country after 2010 G20 Seou ...

, which was held in the company's home province of Zhejiang, world leaders attending the summit, were served Kaluga Queen caviar. Kaluga Queen has gained international acclaim for its distinctive offerings. Its caviar is used in over 27 three-Michelin-starred restaurants across France.https://lemberg.uk/en/blog/kaluga-queen-caviar#:~:text=Kaluga%20Queen%20has%20earned%20worldwide,suppliers%20from%20Russia%20and%20Iran

References

{{reflist Companies based in Zhejiang Food and drink companies of China Chinese brands