It's no longer necessary to commit a crime against Mother Nature to satisfy a craving for the world's most exquisite delicacy: Two California companies are producing the tasty eggs in a sustainable, environmentally friendly way.

Sterling Caviar, a unit of Norway's Stolt Sea Farm, has been farming a California version of white sturgeon, which was overfished to near extinction a century ago and has been largely protected since 1994. Sterling expects to produce nearly 10 metric tons in 2007.

The San Francisco-based Tsar Nicoulai, which sells about 6 tons a year, markets its white sturgeon as "California estate osetra" even though it sells Caspian ossetra caviar. Both companies sell their farmed caviar for about $60 to $80 an ounce and have farms near Sacramento.

If California caviar seems salty, don't blame the companies. To ensure a long shelf life -- caviar is harvested in spring and 80 percent is consumed around Christmas -- the Food and Drug Administration forces producers to use more salt than the palate demands.

France expects to produce 20 tons of caviar in 2007 from a stock of Siberian sturgeon imported in the late 1970s. It retails in the United States for about as much as California sturgeon.

Not only is the wild stuff two or three times pricier than farm caviar, it's also riskier. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, quality control has fallen drastically. Nowadays, consumers might be paying for roe that is rotten, oversalted or both.

But if you have to have the real stuff, fly to Atyrau, Kazakhstan, or Astrakhan, Russia. Check into a hotel with a view of the Ural or Volga rivers and a refrigerator. Buy a bottle of vodka, a loaf of black bread, some green onions and a kilo of fresh, perishable and lightly salted black market caviar for about $500, which most merchants will let you taste before purchase. Go for ossetra, which is the tastiest and least endangered. At 3 ounces a serving, it could last a week.

Only then will you understand what the fuss is about: The low salt content frees up a rainbow of flavors you could never experience from American farmed caviar.

Hurry up -- the season ends in late July.