There was plenty to go around. North American sturgeons were abundant in the Hudson River, the Great Lakes and Sacramento River, and numerous barrels of their salted roe, similar to that of their Caspian Sea cousins, were shipped to Europe for perhaps a more genteel style of consumption.

By 1901, however, the stocks had suffered from such over-exploitation that commercial fisheries were shut down for several years at a time; in 1917, they were closed for good. The state permitted sport fishermen to land this prize catch only in 1954, and under strict regulation.

Since its turn-of-the-century heyday, the North American roe has been considered the poor relations of the Caspian Sea species that produce 90 percent of the world's caviar. In fact, American lumpfish "caviar" and other so-called surrogates served today at Sunday brunches have given domestic eggs a bad name. Only sturgeon produce caviar. (The word is derived from the Turkish word khavyar for the salted roe of sturgeon.)

But we have come full circle since discerning Americans filled their blinis with imported eggs. California caviar has returned, triumphant -albeit a farmed version of the once-plentiful resource.

After several decades of water pollution and the damming of natural spawning grounds, the Caspian sturgeon that produce the beluga, osetra and sevruga caviars were especially prone to insult. Then the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union unleashed gangs of criminals, as well as impoverished locals, who poached the sturgeon for their own profit.

As a result, 23 sturgeon species, including beluga, osetra and sevruga, were placed on the list for trade regulation in April 1998 by CITES, the Convention on International Trade and Endangered Species. Their status will be re-evaluated in December when experts will meet to consider whether to take the first step toward banning the harvest of Caspian Sea caviar until the population can recover. Regardless of their findings, however, many food professionals contend that as the Caspian production has dropped, the price has risen and the quality has declined.

But if fin de siècle prosperity has fostered a taste for these briny pearls, there is an alternative, a guilt-free way to indulge in this delicacy of the sea. Now that things are looking the most bleak for wild sturgeon, California's farmed caviar may come to the rescue. Fish farmers are now producing enough roe for it to reckon in the marketplace. And like the California wine industry in its formative years, the excellent quality of the initial harvests indicate the potential for greatness.

"Just as California wines have come into their own right and are enjoyed around the world, I too see the same thing happening with California caviar," observes Charlie Trotter, whose eponymous restaurant in Chicago uses the industry's two leading brands, Sterling and Tsar Nicoulai Caviar.

"The California caviar is of a very high quality and is very promising," Trotter adds. "I particularly like to use it as a 'crust' to many of my seafood preparations. The small, delicate eggs add an incredible texture that explode with flavor."

And beyond the professional kitchen, consumers now have major access to the farmed product in retail outlets, including Zabar's, Balducci's and several divisions of Whole Foods Market. In fact, Whole Foods recently dropped Caspian beluga, osetra and sevruga in its 17 stores across the Northeast in favor of cultured California caviar. "We have always been the first to get out of something that can't be managed sustainably," says Stephanie Stathe, seafood coordinator for the northeast region, who chose to carry the Sterling product. "We have a high quality alternative that is consistent, with a nice flavor," she adds.

Caviarteria, which now has seven retail store-eateries and is considered to be the world's largest single buyer and seller of premium caviar, recently agreed to market hand-selected Sterling caviar under the Caviarteria label. Limited quantities of Royal Black (the darker range of Sterling's Classic), and Golden Imperial debuted after Thanksgiving at the 59th Street flagship store in New York City.

"The two grades that I tasted and selected for Caviarteria had the same taste, texture and size as Caspian. Basically they were identical," enthuses Eric Sobol, co-owner of the 50-year-old family business. He praised the large, pale eggs of the golden Sterling Imperial for its "mild, clean flavor with no detection of fishiness." For its virtues, Caviarteria prices the two farmed grades of hand-selected caviar starting at $78 per ounce, comparable to Caspian beluga and osetra.

Trotter reserves making the comparison. "I would never view it as a replacement for osetra, beluga or sevruga caviar from the Caspian Sea, but rather I view it as an entity that is unique unto itself."

Justin Malan, executive director of the California Aquaculture Association, agrees that the farmed roe already has created an important niche for itself. "We're using a native species, showing we can raise a high-end product that can be economically profitable and environmentally sustainable.

"The main challenge is how to get to efficient volumes for economies of scale," he adds. "It's a slow-growing fish." In the wild, females may take 15 to 20 years to spawn (and may live more than 100 years). For decades, the Soviets' hatchery program released millions of fingerlings into the Caspian Sea every year, destined to become the next generation of caviar-producing sturgeon. But neither they, nor anyone in the U.S., had successfully raised mature fish, let alone accelerated their growth.

Enter entrepreneurs Dafne and Mats Engstrom of California Sunshine Fine Foods. When the couple learned in 1978 that white sturgeon were found in the Sacramento River, "we asked the fishermen, 'do the fish have black roe?,'" Dafne Engstrom recalls. "They told us, 'we feed it to the cats.'" With the commercial harvest of sturgeon forbidden in California, the Engstroms conceived of farming them instead. They approached Professor Serge Doroshov, a newly arrived Russian émigré at the University of California-Davis. They lobbied U.S. Fish and Wildlife for basic research funds, and UC-Davis got its grant.

The California Department of Fish and Game initially issued permits to the university, and later to private farmers, to collect wild sturgeon to act as brood stock for ensuing generations, planting the seeds for a new aquaculture industry. Sturgeon meat would pay the bills, but the ultimate goal was caviar production. "We knew we didn't know a lot," admits Ken Beer, who was a graduate student at the time at UC-Davis. Licensed commercial fishermen fished throughout the night up and down the Sacramento River. "It was a seat-of-the-pants operation," says Beer, president of The Fishery, a pioneer producer of farmed sturgeon.

About a dozen fish farmers initially took up the challenge, including the Engstroms, who were among the founding partners of the original Sierra AquaFarms. (Sierra merged in 1997 with Stolt Sea Farm California LLC, an international aquaculture concern.) The couple, who today own Tsar Nicoulai Caviar, still hold a small share in the company that emerged as one of the few remaining players.

After about a decade of producing sturgeon for meat, Stolt decided in 1994 to go for caviar, recalls General Manager Peter Struffenegger. After a small yield in 1995, production escalated by 1999 to 3,000 pounds, packaged under the Sterling label. This year, more sturgeon came on line, producing approximately 8,000 to 8,500 pounds of roe, an amount expected to hold steady for 2001. "For the first time, our volume can supply the U.S. consumer with Sterling caviar," says Chuck Edwards, sales and marketing manager for Stolt, the chief producer of farmed roe. Within five years, the company expects to produce a whopping 30,000 pounds.

The mood is similarly upbeat at Tsar Nicoulai Caviar. The Engstroms currently source their sturgeon in California and elsewhere, but they process the farmed roe in their own San Francisco bayside facility. For now, the farmed domestic product comprises a small fraction of the Tsar Nicoulai Caviar output, which imports caviar from China's Amur River and Russia, and buys from other importers.

After raising white sturgeon in the early 1980s, a 1984 fire hung up the couple's initial efforts. They've since redoubled their commitment and estimate their operations will yield some 3,000 pounds of farmed caviar this year. On the drawing board: a 200-acre farm in the Sacramento Valley, which they expect to be in place by spring.

The world of bred sturgeon is small. Besides California, there are a handful of farms scattered around the U.S. and Europe that culture sturgeon, including efforts in Italy, Germany and France. Though Beer continues to raise fish for Stolt at his large Sacramento Valley farm in the midst of dairy land, there were a couple of years when he sold fish to both Tsar Nicoulai and Stolt. So how were they different?

"Processing caviar is pretty straight-forward," he says, "but there are subtle differences," like the amount of salt one adds, for instance, even if it's malossol (Russian for "lightly salted"). "It's like winemaking," he continues. "It happens all the time with grape growers that sell to different wineries, and you get a totally different product."

And yet, Beer continues, "we've had fish held in identical conditions, the exact same tank, the exact same feed for years, and the caviar from one will taste quite different from the other." He chalks it up to the genetic makeup of the population, for now.

A study is about to get under way to determine if conditions and feed, as well as handling and processing methods, can be used to fine-tune the flavor of sturgeon and salmon roe.

The Sierra site, the largest of Stolt's three facilities, is bounded by flat rice fields in the Sacramento Valley. Farmed fish are mothered in ways natural selection would never tolerate. With more than 1,000 sturgeon mingling in one tank, there are bound to be leaders of the pack, and those left behind. Stolt Hatchery Manager Anita Bunter says one of the lessons she and her staff have learned is to classify the fish frequently, separating them into different tanks. "It helps the precocious, fast-growing fish, too, because you get them on to larger feed faster."

At age three, the fish are sexed by biopsy. It takes 60 seconds to make the small incision that determines whether they will be a candidate for caviar. For eight to ten years, the fish are cultured in 40-foot-wide tanks with members of their class year, playfully revealing themselves by breaking the surface like dolphins in an aquarium. (Though this bottom-feeding, boneless fish traces its origins back 250 million years, it remains enigmatic.)

Caviar processing season occurs February through June. Each day, a tank truck delivers the day's catch, some 20 to 30 sturgeon, calmed by chilled water, for processing. This June afternoon, fish number 1159 fairly brims with eggs resembling old-fashioned marbles with a mottled olive pattern. Precious cargo destined for the toast points, blinis and mother-of-pearl spoons of discriminating palates across America.

A 79-pound specimen, fish number 1159 has had every detail of her 8-year life recorded, from the tanks in which she swam to her food and her parentage. Moments after the fish is sacrificed, the massive ovaries are removed, and ushered into the processing center. The roe sac is carefully screened to separate the eggs, which are then thoroughly cleaned in cold water. The eggs are weighed and lightly salted, then gently mixed by hand. Fish 1159 yielded 9.5 pounds of processed caviar, piled high with a trowel into several cerulean blue tins.

The whole process usually takes less than half an hour, signaling another advantage: farmed caviar is harvested immediately from females. In the wild, under the best of conditions, hours may elapse before roe is processed.

Because they culture only one species, Sterling grades according to color, with egg size roughly keeping to a 3-mm berry. Classic, which resembles wild osetra with its dark gray to golden complexion, constitutes the vast quantity of roe, with pale eggs and jet black completing the spectrum. Eggs display agate patterns, mottling, bull's-eye, lightning bolts and solid shades of eight distinct colors, in all, 44 different variations. You cannot taste the color, however. It's all aesthetics. The lighter caviar, in fact, went to the tsars.

"The Japanese say 'eat with your eyes,'" says David Berkley, the gourmet food and wine purveyor in Sacramento, California, who also prefers the lighter-colored product. Berkley judged the Caspian Sea caviar to be so inconsistent for the past few years that last spring he stopped carrying it altogether. Customer response has been "exceptional," he says.

"I am delighted with the freshness of it and the brighter flavors, as opposed to the muddled, dirty flavors that have been coming out of the Caspian," he says. "I like the cleanness of the flavor and the egg size is good. It's bright and briny with that creamy nutty taste" he favors in osetra.

Iron Horse Vineyards' partner Joy Sterling chose to celebrate her tenth wedding anniversary - she is married to partner-winemaker Forrest Tancer - last June with Tsar Nicoulai farmed caviar. Sterling prefers the California-farmed to the Caspian Sea product. "I was impressed by the freshness and the texture, which was impeccable. It was firm like perfect little pearls, and rich and beautifully balanced."

Even cultured pearls may be a little rich for some peoples' blood - even if, in most cases, one ounce fetches less than $50 - but the farmers are gearing up to satisfy America's enduring appetite for the sea berries. The Fishery's Ken Beer is adding enough tanks over the next four to six years to double his capacity. By that time he expects to have one million pounds of female sturgeon in the water producing an annual harvest of 30,000 pounds of caviar.

While 2000 was a pivotal year, "it's still tough," Stolt's Edwards says. "The perception is that caviar is imported." But decreased Caspian supply is driving a new consideration of domestic caviar. "We've always had a high quality product," Peter Struffenegger says. "We've had major players give us the cold shoulder years ago. They're starting to come around now that they are seeing the handwriting on the wall."

Features Editor Leslie Sternlieb prefers to eat her caviar simply and by the spoonful.

How to Order
To order California farm-raised caviar, delivered by overnight courier, contact the producers directly:

Sterling Caviar. Phone: (800) 525-0333; Web site: www.sterlingcaviar.com
Tsar Nicoulai Caviar. Phone: (800) 95-CAVIAR; Web site: www.tsarnicoulai.com

Rosti Potatoes with California Caviar
Chef Ken Frank, La Toque Restaurant, Napa Valley
This recipe may be downloaded at www.sterlingcaviar.com

• 1/2 cup crème fraîche
• juice of 1/4 fresh lemon
• 1 heaping teaspoon chopped fresh chives, or 3 turns freshly ground white pepper
• 2 medium russet potatoes
• 1/2 cup peanut oil
• 4 ounces California caviar (or more or less to taste or to fit your budget)

Scrub the potatoes - they needn't be peeled - and grate them on the coarsest side of your cheese grater. Form the shredded potatoes into 4 patties - loosely, don't press them - about 1/2" thick, the size of a homemade hamburger. Prepare right away, as shredded potatoes will blacken.

Heat 1/8" peanut oil in a sauté pan over moderate heat so that a test shred of potato sizzles. Using a spatula, carefully place the 4 patties in the hot oil and fry them - never using more than a moderate flame - until they are golden brown on both sides. It should take 2 to 21/2 minutes per side. Remove the patties and blot any excess oil on a paper towel.

Top each potato patty with the crème fraîche and caviar, and serve immediately.

Serves 4