September 7 - Bufalo di Mozzarella at Paestum & Ravello

This morning we arrived in Naples as the sun crept up past the edge of Mt. Vesuvius.  After the ship was cleared we went ashore to meet our driver Nicola Caputo for our journey today.  I was pleased that Nicola was our driver since he had done such an excellent job when I was here with Katie in July.

Since we have been to Naples a few times we decided to do something completely different today, so we headed out on the Autostrada south to Paestum.  Our destination was the Bufalo  di Mozzarella farm Vanulo.  What an incredible experience!  This is the only organic Bufalo Mozzarella place and it sells only to private individuals – no restaurants, stores or shipments other places.  People call them, place an order and pick it up there.  If you read on you will learn more about bufalo mozzarella than you may ever want to know,  but it was so fascinating I must describe it.

The farm has 200 hectares of land and grows their own feed for the animals.  There are 8 bulls (happy ones as our guide Stefania said) and 300 females.  The bufalo are housed in a large covered  barn open on the sides.  It is divided into 4 areas, each of which  is divided into 3 sections.  These are some pampered and happy critters!  The first section is a relaxation one where the buffalo listen to classical music (Mozart) for two hours each morning.  Also in there are automated massage machines which the buffalo go to and get their personal massages – kind of a buffalo spa.  The females know when they are ready to be milked and they move into a waiting room where they hang out until they can move into  a high tech milking machine made in Sweden.  (All of this is done without any humans moving them along or being around.)  Each animal has a microchip and as it enters the machine, a laser reads the data and knows which cow has entered.  The machine milks her automatically and analyzes the milk for lactose, fat, vitamins, etc and determines if the milk is good.  From there the animals move to a feeding area where they eat what they need and rest.

One of the eight happy bulls

One of the beautiful girls

The girls waiting patiently in the waiting room

The laser guided milking machine

There's nothing like a massage with a nice big brush!

Each animal produces 7 liters of milk per day ( a dairy cow can produce as much as 30 liters).  It takes 4 liters to make one kilo of buffalo mozzarella.  The females produce milk for ten months and then are put to pasture for 2 while they calf.  While the process of acquiring the milk is all done untouched by human hands, not so the production of the cheese.

Working the cheese by hand

Once the machine has milked the cows, the milk is poured into large, traditional shaped milk cans and carried by hand to the place where the cheese is made.  A natural whey is added to allow the milk to coagulate.  Once that has occurred it’s placed into large pans to allow some of the moisture to dissipate.  Next the dryer mass is placed in boiling water where it is stirred with a large wooden paddle.  As it reaches the right consistency, the man paddling begins to break off chunks in various sizes from a few hundred grams each to a kilo and tosses them to other men who place the hot cheese into cold water where they work it by hand into either molds or large balls.  These men move so quickly that it’s hard to follow what’s going on.  The shaped or molded cheese is then placed on tables where it finishes it’s cooling off and is ready for use.  The milk is not pasteurized nor does it have any preservatives added.  Stefania told us it should not be refrigerated and should be used within 4 days.  If it’s put into the fridge, the taste is completely changed and it can no longer be used for things like salads but instead should be cooked as in lasagna.  The leftover little chunks produced during the process are taken and made into ricotta cheese.  After watching this process and touring the little museum which had  equipment from days prior to automation, we had an opportunity to sample the cheese.  It was the most delicious mozzarella we’d ever tasted.  It had a very distinct and tangy flavor that will make anything we taste at home seem bland and boring.  The farm produces 400 kg of cheese per day (all sold privately by order), yogurt and yummy gelato among other things.

After our wonderful visit, we headed back to the Amalfi Coast.  We’ve always started our visits to the coast road from the west.  This time Nicola began our drive at the eastern end through Vietri sul Mare, famous for its ceramics.  This end of the coastline is as spectacular as the region around Positano and Amalfi and less crowded.  We stopped for lunch at a family-owned restaurant in Pontone di Scala, the  Ristorante S. Giovanni.  Pontone is just below Ravello overlooking the beautiful coast with its cliffs and gorgeous vistas of the blue sea.  We sat on a covered terrace and had an outstanding lunch and some local wine from Paestum.

Nicola & Al near the restaurant in Pontone

After lunch we wound our way up to Ravello.  What a lovely town!  We found it to be as charming and certainly less crowded than Positano and Amalfi.  The views from so high up are as great as those from Positano .  I love ceramics and there were lots of shops.  In one we found some things we liked so they’re being shipped home for us.

View of the Amalfi Coast from Ravello

Beautiful Ravello

After a too brief stop, Nicola began our drive back to Naples and the ship.  He’s from the Amalfi Coast (the little village of Praiano) so he knows the shortcut roads to avoid traffic.  We wound over the mountains passing through some municipal forests full of chestnut trees.  We’ve never seen so many chestnuts!

Our ride back was uneventful and we set sail having spent a wonderful day seeing something completely different from anything we’d previously experienced in our visits to Naples.