Comparing Caviars: Browne Trading Staff Assess Non-BTC Caviar
“There is a gross abuse of caviar labeling in the United States” – Richard Hall, Browne Trading Caviar Director. Feb 14, 2024.
Dearest caviar readers, you might be wondering what prompted such a quote. Well, our eCommerce team received a package in the mail from a real online caviar customer, asking us to try a competitor’s gold osetra and compare to our own. Though Valentine’s gifts from customers is not something we want to encourage, what a great way to do market research!
We immediately grabbed a 50 gram tin of our Imperial Gold Osetra and started our assessment. Included in our quality assurance team? Our caviar director who has 30 years of meticulous caviar grading experience, Director of Sales and Quality Assurance plus five expert sales reps with 25 years combined seafood and caviar experience. Not surprising with food companies, our sales team samples received caviar to ensure proper communication with our clients regularly.
Before even opening the tins, our expert team noticed tremendous differences. The gifted label has no mention of the caviar farm unlike our label that mentions the Imperial distributor and the Kaluga Queen farm (as it does on all our Imperial sourced caviars). Moreover, the gifted tin does not even notate the country of origin. Last time we checked, New York City did not have any caviar farms 😊
Founded on the pillars of traceability and transparency, we proudly label the country of origin on every tin. Our team firmly believes the heavy caviar importation regulation warrants communication through labels. After all, caviar is a luxury - customers deserve to know the sourcing of their product to have the best.
Once we popped open the tins, our caviar director knew before even tasting the pearls, this osetra labeled caviar had a high probability of species mislabeling – he said this was not an osetra. In fact, it looks exactly like our Caviar Amur caviar, which comes from a kaluga hybrid species. After tasting, we observed that the gifted caviar had no nuttiness of a typical osetra. Additionally, it had slight liver notes, a typical aftertaste of kaluga hybrid caviar.
When tasted side by side, our Gold Osetra surely tasted different, but of course it tasted different, it was a real gold osetra. Aside from the lack of origin and species labeling, the gifted pearls looked pretty and tasted nice. But if you’re spending hundreds of dollars on a tin, don’t you want to know what you’re eating and where it came from?