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"Bambola! Rossa! Tragedia! Veloce! Come on, gals, it's time to be milked..." The water buffalo milkman coaxed and wheedled his charges in a rich Neapolitan accent. It sounded like surreal poetry. "If you don't call them by name they won't come," he said. "They're gentle, lovable creatures." Soon, big-lashed Bambola and her sister water buffaloes sauntered from their wading pool to be relieved of their afternoon's milk, the makings of what might just be the world's best mozzarella. 

We were standing in the middle of the ultra-modern Vannullo water buffalo dairy and cheese factory half an hour south of Naples, famous throughout Italy for the quality of its wholly organic products: mozzarella and ricotta fresh or smoked, provola cheese and yogurt. But the scene could have been straight out of Antiquity: the ruined temples of Paestum rise across emerald fields and national park land a mere mile and a half away from the facility. 

Water buffaloes like Bambola have thrived in this lush swath of southern Italy — the birthplace of mozzarella — since time immemorial. No one is sure just when they arrived from India, via the Middle East, though many historians think bubalus bubalis may have trudged behind Hannibal's elephants into Italy around 216 B.C. If they arrived later, it was probably with hordes of invaders around 600 A.D. 

In either case, following the fall of the Roman Empire the land around Paestum slowly turned into a swamp, fed by the Sele and Alento rivers. The inhabitants fled but the water buffaloes stayed on, ranging freely among the ruins. For centuries, local cowboys, known as butteri, would round up the wild animals, rough-and-ready milkmen would milk them and cheese makers would transform the milk into the elastic, white balls found today in every supermarket in the world. 

The region's swamps were drained in the earlier 20th century. The water buffaloes survive in captivity on farms, like Vannullo, equipped with pools or crossed by rivers. In order to regulate their body temperature, they must be able to submerge themselves in water several times a day. There are an estimated 80,000 head of buffalo in Italy now, all of them on diary farms. 

Like the 400 females and dozen males at the Vannullo farm, most Italian buffaloes live in the hot, humid lowlands of the Campania region, between Naples, Salerno, Caserta, Benevento, Battipaglia, Eboli and Capaccio. The area has its own DOC and DOP quality-control appellations. 

Vannullo is the brainchild of dapper Antonio Palmieri, a former banker who in 1988 gave up his career to take over the buffalo ranch his grandfather had started in 1900. It took Palmieri about eight years to embellish the family's 18th-century farmhouse, plant espaliered lemons and roses along handsome stone walls, and transform the ranch into a model organic farm, dairy and cheese factory. It was officially certified in 1996. What that means, explained Palmieri, is that all the fodder — corn, wheat, rye, oats, alfalfa, sorghum and grass — is grown without pesticides or chemical fertilizers on the estate's 225 acres. No hormones are given, there's no artificial insemination and only homeopathic medicine is used to treat animals. Everything is done by hand, from the cheese making to the weeding. 

And the petting: the buffaloes get first-class treatment and are practically pets (except the mature males, who behave like the bulls they are). Their ample pens are swept several times a day. The place is uncommonly clean and orderly. I glanced up from bashful Bambola to the snowy peaks east of the farm and thought, "this could be Switzerland." In Italy "mozzarella" refers only to cheese made from buffalo milk (cow's milk mozzarella is called fior di latte). It's richer (9 percent fat and 5 percent protein) and more flavorful than cow's milk (4 percent fat and 3 protein). The name derives from the verb mozzare, to pinch off into bits. At the Vannullo cheese factory you can arrange for a private tour as I did and watch the long, complex and artful process of making this delicacy. 

First, said the head cheese-maker, you add rennet to the fresh milk and heat it to about 100 degrees F. After 90 minutes, you break the curds up and let them mature in the whey another three hours. Then you cut them into 35-pound chunks, mince them and put them in a tub with whey and nearly boiling water. You stir with a wooden paddle until the pieces bind and form a soft lump that you can pull into long, stretchy threads. These are what the cheese-maker pinches off into bits, keeping them constantly submerged. After soaking in a saline solution for another few hours, the glistening round balls are bagged in their own liquid and sold as thimble-sized cardinali, bite-sized bocconcini, normal mozzarelle or giant aversane weighing about a pound. The real test of the mozzarella-maker's art, though, is the intricately plaited treccia, my personal favorite when it comes to flavor and texture. I watched a treccia was made with sweeping, graceful underwater motions. 

Genuine mozzarella is rich, flavorful and delicate: it should be eaten the day it is made, at most a few days later (smoked mozzarella lasts longer). That's why, said Palmieri as we approached the sales counter, his cheese is sold exclusively on-site and not even in local restaurants. "We sell out every day," he admitted, as we battled our way through lines of customers. "People drive all the way down from Rome to get it." I popped a still-warm bocconcino into my mouth, tasting an explosion of tangy cream with hazelnut highlights, and instantly understood why. 

Caseificio Vannulo 

10 Via Galileo Galilei 

84040 Capaccio Scalo (Salerno) 

Tel: 011 39 0828/724765 

Fax: 011 39 0828/725245 

Daaid D. Downie is the author of "Cooking the Roman Way : Authentic Recipes from the Home Cooks and Trattorias of Rome."