Simply put, caviar is any single salted fish roe or egg. TRUE caviar comes from the icy waters of the Caspian Sea where the environment is most conducive to producing the finest sturgeon. Ninety percent of the caviar produced in the world comes from the Caspian Sea.
Sturgeons have an unerring survival instinct.
These bottom-dwellers with their sensitive barbels and pouted snouts have existed for millennia. Even to this day, relatives of the sturgeon live in the black depths of the ocean, in subterranean watercourses, even in hot springs. Sturgeons are scaleless except for five rows of large, pointed, platelike scales running along the top and sides of the body. Their exoskeleton is part bone and part cartilage, placing them midway between sharks and bony fish. They can live for 100 years, and reach maturity between 12 and 20 years of age.