Are Buffalo Dairies the Next American Agricultural Phenomenon? (via The Splendid Table)

If you’ve ever eaten Buffalo Mozzarella (Mozzarella di Bufala) you know how deeply complex, creamy, and sweet it is compared to is bovine-derived cousin.  You may not know, though, that there are very few American buffalo dairies, hence most of the buffalo products we eat here are imported from Italy.  To aid in shipment some buffalo milk is evaporated abroad and then reconstituted stateside.

What makes running a dairy of this kind so complex and why have so many failed?  Learn more about this sensitive species and what it takes to produce great tasting domestic buffalo-based cheese.

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When I was a kid, I used to see this ad on TV: buffalo grazing, village ladies pouring pearly white milk into copper pots. It’s the Indian version of the “Got Milk?” ads.

India is home to most of the world’s water buffalo. As a kid, I drank buffalo milk instead of cow milk, and let me tell you, it’s disgusting — oily and sickly sweet.

As much as I hate the milk, though, I couldn’t get enough of the stuff it was turned into: ghee, which smells like warm sugar, or cool, pillowy curd eaten after a spicy meal. I moved to the U.S. decades ago, and I’ve been looking for that rich buffalo taste ever since.

Photo Credit: Sruthi Pinnamaneni

“Buffalo milk is really the fourth milk, right?” says Rob Kaufelt, the owner of Murray’s Cheese in New York City, a popular store that now sells gourmet dairy products in several states. “Most of what we sell is cow, sheep and goat. Every now and then, somebody tries to sell camel milk, yak milk, human breast milk, or whatever it is that’s hot that week. Of course, that never works. But buffalo milk, that is obviously the real thing. Nobody has been that successful in making it viable here yet.”

It turns out, there is no amazing buffalo milk product made in the U.S., because there’s just not enough buffalo milk to make one.

“Water buffalos are the divas of the dairy world,” says Julia Collins, who also works at Murray’s Cheese. Collins knows all about these divas — she used to live on a buffalo dairy in Italy. “They don’t have sweat glands, so they laze around in the mud all day. If you want to take milk from a water buffalo, she has to be under the right conditions. She has to be nuzzled. When a water buffalo sees a stranger, she might stop giving her milk. That’s how sensitive they are.”

By Sruthi Pinnamaneni

Read more here.