Could Kentucky be the Napa Valley of America's caviar industry?

Bailey Loosemore | Courier Journal

Show Caption Hide Caption Kentucky caviar? It's becoming a big export from the Bluegrass State David Fields, owner operator at Lake City Fish Market in Grand Rivers, KY, discusses Kentucky caviar and its place among the state's exports.

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated how caviar is processed. Fish do not have to be alive for their eggs to be harvested.

David Fields reaches a glove-covered hand into the sliced-open belly of a long-nosed paddlefish, smoothly removing a pouch that contains hundreds of tiny grayish eggs.

His movements are swift but careful, developed over six years of practice at the Lake City Fish Market in Grand Rivers, Kentucky.

Care is key in this line of business. Fields doesn't want to damage the eggs that could cost him or his fishermen dollars, not pennies. So he works with an air of patience, gently tossing the eggs into a large metal bowl before bringing his hand back to the fish to retrieve a second group.

The millions of eggs that are annually washed, cured and packaged within Fields' nondescript warehouse will go on to be sold as American caviar — a product that's said to rival the quality and taste of European imports three times its price.

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Don't believe the hype? Ask acclaimed chefs like Edward Lee, Wolfgang Puck or Emeril Lagasse, who've purchased wild-caught caviar pulled from Kentucky's lakes and rivers.

The chefs know what many don't — that caviar produced in Kentucky and its neighboring states has potential to change the course of the international market.

Kentucky caviar stands up to the acclaimed sturgeon roe (or eggs) that have been over-harvested from the Caspian Sea. And one of the state's universities has led the way in researching a new system for caviar production, called reservoir ranching, that could drastically grow the state's output without harming the environment.

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If proponents of reservoir ranching can get more people on board, they say caviar could eventually do for Kentucky what wine did for California.

It could transform an entire region.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CAVIAR

People have been eating fish eggs for about a millennium.

Since the beginning, caviar has mostly come from three species of sturgeon harvested from the Caspian Sea. But over-fishing caused the sea's sturgeon population to plummet by the 1990s, and agencies worldwide responded by placing strict regulations on how much can be harvested.

In the United States, federal and state governments heavily monitor commercial fishing of shovelnose sturgeon and its prehistoric cousin, paddlefish, which can be found in 22 states that touch the Mississippi and Ohio rivers.

Kentucky has fewer restrictions than most states, making it one of the prime candidates for an American caviar takeover. But getting people to try the Bluegrass State's product has proved challenging.

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Lewis Shuckman, owner of Shuckman's Fish Co. in western Louisville, has been selling paddlefish caviar for almost 20 years.

It's a good product, he says, but it's often written off as inferior to European sturgeon.

"When I started to gradually go out and see people and let them sample it, some of them said you're whacked out, caviar don't come from Kentucky, hit the road jack," Shuckman says.

A 2003 article in the New York Times turned things around, leading Shuckman to receive orders from chefs nationwide.

Today he processes caviar brought to his market by permitted fishermen who catch paddlefish in Lake Barkley and Kentucky Lake. But he's also a proponent of reservoir ranching, which he and industry experts say could vastly expand Kentucky's caviar production.

Reservoir ranching has been discussed as a potential new industry for the state since the 1990s, according to the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife's website. The nontraditional farming method involves stocking bodies of water with paddlefish that feed on natural populations of plankton and that are harvested for both their meat and eggs.

Retired Kentucky State University researcher Steve Mims has spent more than 30 years studying paddlefish and reservoir ranching, and he says the state could easily increase its caviar production by opening public waters to paddlefish ranchers.

The Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife, however, has routinely declined the request, citing concerns about introducing privately owned fish into publicly owned lakes.

"We could have the world's biggest caviar production here in this state," Mims says. "But we're hindered by not having the water to do it in. Kentucky has plenty of water, but we're not allowed to use it."

'SECRET RECIPE'

In western Kentucky, Fields has quietly turned Lake City Fish Market in Grand Rivers into one of the largest caviar producers in the country.

His business is located near Lake Barkley, Kentucky Lake and a section of the Ohio River where permitted fishermen can catch paddlefish and shovelnose sturgeon.

There, Fields processes and packages more than 10,000 pounds of caviar every year, selling it to loyal customers in the "four corners of the states" — New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Seattle.

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It's something he's become adept at, though he had no inkling about the caviar or fish industry even a decade ago.

"I was an assistant principal and athletic director at a high school," Fields says of his life before the market. ".... I became an administrator at 32 years old and felt like I was spinning my wheels. I kinda got a little burnt out ... I wanted to be in something where I got the fruits of my labor."

Fields found the market around 2012 and bought it off a former owner and his son, who'd started processing caviar about five years before.

At first, Fields was scared to touch the eggs. A pound of sturgeon roe can go for as much as $200 on the wholesale market or up to $320 if he sells it retail. Fields didn't want to screw anything up.

Soon enough he started experimenting and developed his own methods for cleaning and curing the eggs, pulled directly from the fish on a metal table in his warehouse.

"How much salt I put in it, how long I let it cure, everything I do from right now to the end is our secret recipe," Fields says while walking a Courier Journal reporter through the process. "That's why people come in and try to watch us. I don't care because there are little things we do that no one will pick up on."

It's Fields' attention to detail that has made Dmitry Sklyarov a lifelong customer of Lake City Fish Market.

The owner of Black Gold Caviar in New York purchases caviar from Fields by the pound, and he in turn sells it to hotels and restaurants across the Big Apple.

"Ever since I tried it, I thought the quality was as good or better than what was out there at the time," Sklyarov says. "... I think the quality there is underappreciated."

Fields employs one full-time worker and one part-time worker to assist him with caviar harvesting, which runs November through May. That's the best time to extract eggs from paddlefish and sturgeon because the water is colder, making the eggs more firm, Fields said.

The meat remaining on the fish is also cleaned and sold.

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Marcus Harrell from Murray, Kentucky, has been with Fields since he bought the market, and he started fishing for caviar himself in the latest season.

"It wasn't nearly as easy as I thought it would be," Harrell says, "but I had some guys willing to help me learn."

Kentucky law prohibits snagging, or catching fish by dragging a hook along a waterway's floor. So to catch paddlefish and sturgeon, fishermen must build nets that fit state regulations and then compete with other fishermen to find the best places to drop them.

"You're sitting out like a wall of webbing and are basically trying to find places where fish will move to," Harrell says. "You have to track them, anticipate."

The nets are expensive. The competition is fierce. But landing a good haul can make everything worth it. In one evening alone, Harrell catches five sturgeon that contain a combined two pounds of eggs. It's enough to pocket $170.

RENEE'S RESERVOIR

For Renee Koerner, competition isn't an issue.

The owner of Big Fish Farms has spent the past decade building a reservoir ranching system across southern Ohio and northern Kentucky, where she's grown thousands of young paddlefish that can be harvested by her alone.

To create the system, Koerner forms contracts with people who own private bodies of water of all shapes and sizes. Think subdivision ponds, empty quarries and small lakes at city parks.

Koerner fills the lakes with young paddlefish and pays the owners of the lakes a portion of her proceeds. To be honest, Koerner would like some competition.

She'd love for more people to get into the reservoir ranching business, which she says has a very low impact on the environment and doesn't require farmers to own large swaths of land.

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"It's a little bit of out-of-the-box farming," says Koerner, who spent most of her life working in the food and beverage industry. "It's something people need to start thinking about. ... It's a new food production system that I think we need to consider as we move forward so that young people can actually farm."

The only big drawback: Paddlefish take a long time to mature.

"Sometimes people are afraid to do something that is going to take so long before they get a return on it," Koerner says. "Once we get a little bit larger, maybe people will start looking at it."

Koerner says the caviar she's been able to produce so far has impressed chefs in Cincinnati and Chicago.

She plans to expand to another city next season, maybe Boston, New York or Las Vegas. But she'd like to see more people starting paddlefish ranches now so that within the next few decades, Kentucky could become a key player in caviar production — similar to the way Napa Valley grabbed a foothold in the exclusive wine business.

"At this point, in California, nobody would argue it's one of the best wine growing regions in the world," Koerner says. "It wasn't always that way. In half a lifetime I saw that happen. With this ranching, we're doing something nobody else in the world is doing."

Bailey Loosemore: 502-582-4646; bloosemore@courier-journal.com; Twitter: @bloosemore. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: www.courier-journal.com/baileyl.

CAVIAR FAQS

What is caviar?

Caviar is the salted eggs of sturgeon or other large fish. It is considered a delicacy and is often eaten as a garnish.

Where does it come from?

In Kentucky, caviar is harvested from shovelnose sturgeon and paddlefish pulled from public waterways like the Ohio River, Lake Barkley and Kentucky Lake.

How is it processed?

To make caviar, producers must cut eggs out of a fish. The eggs are rinsed with water and cured with salt, which removes excess water from the inside of the eggs' thin membranes. The eggs are served uncooked.

What does it taste like?

David Fields, owner of Lake City Fish Market in Grand Rivers, Kentucky, says caviar "tastes kind of like a nutty butter. The way I describe it to people is if you took half of a cashew and half of an almond and you put a dollop of butter on it and you ate that, the aftertaste is what it would taste like."

What is reservoir ranching?

Reservoir ranching is a farming method that involves raising paddlefish in public or private bodies of water, such as reservoirs, lakes or ponds. Paddlefish feed on plankton naturally found in the water, and farmers must wait at least 10 years for the fish to mature before harvesting them for their meat and eggs.

Where can I buy caviar?

Buy Kentucky-caught caviar online through Shuckman's Fish Co. (kysmokedfish.com); America's Best Caviar (americasbestcaviar.com); or Big Fish Farms (bigfishfarms.com).