Caviar Tasting

A caviar expert leads your team through a guided flight, live on camera. Kits reach every participant's door beforehand, so the whole group opens the same tins at the same moment and tastes together, wherever people are sitting.

The Petrossian Specialties flight sets Ossetra - balanced, nutty and briny with firm, juicy grains - against Daurenki, a Kaluga and Amur sturgeon hybrid with large eggs and a delicate, buttery finish. The American Selections flight puts Classic Osetra, rich and firm, beside Royal Osetra, whose larger grains carry a bolder, nuttier, creamier profile. Both come with mini blinis, and either can be paired with champagne or vodka.

Your expert covers where each caviar comes from, how to taste it and what to look for, then hands the floor to the room. Most of the fun is watching people discover they can genuinely taste the difference.

Clean, briny and buttery - the sea rather than the fish. Good caviar is never aggressively fishy. Underneath the salt sit nutty and creamy notes that shift by species and by where the sturgeon was raised, much the way wine shifts by vineyard. Texture matters as much as flavor: the grains should be firm enough to pop against the roof of your mouth and release their oils, not dissolve into paste. Ossetra reads nutty and firm; the Kaluga hybrids read rounder and softer. Tasting two side by side is the fastest way to learn the difference, because almost nobody can describe caviar until they have a second one to compare it against.

Strictly speaking, caviar is sturgeon roe. Roe from other fish - salmon, trout, lumpfish - is normally labeled by its species rather than sold as caviar. The classic sturgeon names are these:

1. Beluga: the largest eggs and the most storied name, prized for a smooth, buttery flavor with a hint of creaminess. Beluga sturgeon can take fifteen years or more to mature, which is a large part of why the roe has always been rare and expensive.
2. Osetra, also spelled Ossetra or Asetra: medium grains ranging from deep brown to gold, with a nutty richness more assertive than Beluga. This is the backbone of both flights on this page.
3. Sevruga: the smallest eggs of the classic three, from a smaller sturgeon, valued for an intense briny punch.
4. Kaluga and Amur: river sturgeon now widely farmed. The Daurenki in the Petrossian flight is a hybrid of the two, with large, firm eggs and a soft, buttery finish.

The wild Caspian and Black Sea fisheries that made these names famous are long past their peak, so nearly all fine caviar today comes from sturgeon farms rather than nets. That shift is the reason a tasting like this is possible at all. Rockoly has partnered with leading caviar producers in the US and Europe, and your planner can tell you exactly which houses are in your flight.

Because metal gets in the way. Silver in particular reacts with the roe and leaves a faint metallic tang that runs straight over the delicate flavor you paid for. The traditional fix is a spoon of mother-of-pearl, bone or horn - inert materials that add nothing at all.

Two more habits worth stealing from serious tasters. They skip the chopped onion and lemon that often come with caviar, on the grounds that those garnishes cover a caviar up rather than show it off. And they taste the first spoonful off the back of the hand, in the hollow beside the thumb, where a little body heat opens the aroma before it reaches the mouth.

One last piece of vocabulary: malossol on a tin is Russian for little salt, and it signals roe cured lightly enough to still taste of itself rather than of brine. Your expert covers the tasting technique before the first tin is opened, so nobody has to guess at the etiquette.

That's the whole point. Nobody arrives an expert, and the format is built for beginners: a live expert, two different caviars in small quantities, and full permission to say a spoonful tastes like nothing you expected. There is no cooking, no knife work and no way to fall behind. Everyone gets the same kit, the same instructions and the same first-timer's moment at the same second, which is a rare thing on a video call. It is one of the easiest premium experiences to hand a group that has never done anything like it.

A champagne or vodka pairing is an add-on at $85 per person on either flight.

The virtual event rate covers a personal chef, a dedicated event planner, a Zoom host, all ingredients delivered to each participant, and gratuities. Shipping is free inside the US, and we deliver internationally to Australia, the UK, Canada, Sweden, Ireland, Germany, South Africa, Mexico, India and Spain among others, or send a shopping list if you'd rather source locally.

Set against a restaurant dinner at similar spend, which only your local people can attend, a caviar flight arrives in front of every person on the team, at home, with an expert explaining what they're eating. That's why it works for board dinners, client appreciation and year-end recognition rather than reading as an ordinary team call.

Tell us in advance and we adjust at no extra cost. The champagne and vodka pairings are optional add-ons, and running the tasting alcohol-free is a completely normal request. Kosher, gluten-free and other dietary needs are handled the same way. If someone doesn't eat fish at all, flag it early and your planner will sort out what they receive instead so they aren't left watching. Customization is free, so it's also worth saying if you want a particular line-up. Group sizes run from 3 to 600 and up, and very large groups are usually split by department or across a couple of days so the tasting stays conversational.

Cold and sealed, at the back of the fridge. Caviar is a fresh product, so it belongs in the coldest part of a refrigerator and stays closed until the session starts. An unopened tin keeps far better than an opened one, so the whole instruction is to leave it shut. Never freeze it - ice crystals rupture the eggs, and a tin that has been through a freezer comes back as paste.

When people sit down, set the tin in a bowl of ice rather than on a warm desk, and open it as the tasting begins. Your expert covers the handling at the top of the session, so nobody has to get it right from memory. The one thing worth raising early is an address where a cold parcel could sit unattended - an empty office is the case to plan around. Your planner owns address collection and shipping, so flag it and they'll route the delivery. Every kit ships insured too: lost, delayed or damaged means a replacement kit. Ask your planner when your tins are due to land, keep them cold until the session, and that is the entire homework.

Use the inquiry form on this page, email events@rockoly.com, or call (617) 939-9732, and a planner replies with available dates, flight options and a quote. Roughly three weeks is the right runway, and caviar is the one page where that is about the goods rather than the diary: tins are perishable, they travel cold, and a champagne or vodka pairing moves separately again. Rush dates are sometimes possible depending on chef availability, but this is not the menu to gamble a board dinner on.

A $250 deposit holds the date, and you can pay by credit card, ACH bank transfer or check. Cancel 21 or more days out and you are refunded what you paid less any nonrecoverable costs already committed; 8 to 20 days out you choose between a 50% refund and a 100% Rockoly credit; inside 8 days payments are nonrefundable, though one complimentary reschedule is yours if you ask 14+ days ahead. Every event carries the Love Your Event Guarantee: your team should have an amazing experience, and if your Rockoly event doesn't live up to expectations, we'll make it right.