Buffalicious: Britain’s Buffalo Mozzarella With Soul

In Somerset, a small herd of water buffalo is quietly challenging what British cheese can be.

Buffalicious began, like many great farming stories, with a problem. Jonathan’s father was running a small dairy farm at a time when conventional milk production had become brutally hard. Quotas, poor returns and supermarket pressure meant there was little joy, and even less money, in producing milk from black and white cows.

So he changed course.

First came free-range chickens, then an article about water buffalo. It was different, bold and slightly mad. Perfect, perhaps, for a farmer who had always found another way.

The first idea was not mozzarella but survival. Buffalo meat went to farmers’ markets, and suddenly the family saw something new: a product sold directly, cash in the tin, customers in front of them, no waiting 60 days to be paid.

Then the public started asking the obvious question.

“Why don’t you make mozzarella?”

It took four or five years of nudging before Buffalicious finally did. The result is now one of Britain’s most exciting fresh cheeses: raw milk buffalo mozzarella, handmade in Somerset, respectful of Italy but unmistakably its own thing.

Jonathan is clear about what he wants from it. A thin skin. A soft, creamy middle. A cheese that almost dissolves on the tongue. Gentle sweetness, slight salt, clean milk, no sliminess, no rubbery supermarket dullness.

Buffalo milk gives the cheese its striking whiteness, richness and depth. But Jonathan insists the secret is not just the milk. It is how gently it is treated.

“We do everything in our process to make sure we don’t smash that fat,” he says.

That care runs through the farm. The milk travels only around two and a half miles. The buffalo graze when conditions allow. Herbal leys, red clover and careful pasture management are being introduced, despite the twin challenge of flooding and drought in recent years. Chicken manure and farm muck are returned to the land. Nothing here is about pushing animals for volume.

“We don’t need to push them,” Jonathan says. “We are working with our buffalo to produce milk of the highest quality.”

The herd is small. Sometimes only 15 are milking, with around 35 at maximum. That brings pressure. Buffalo are not easy to buy, disease risks are real, and the farm keeps a largely closed herd to protect animal health and stability. They are big animals, social animals, with hierarchy and character.

This is not scalable food in the supermarket sense. And Jonathan does not want it to be.

Having grown up around farming systems shaped by supermarket economics, he is wary of any route where the producer loses control.

“You are never in control of your own destiny,” he says, describing the treadmill of producing cheaper and cheaper until only the biggest survive.

Buffalicious is aiming for something else: a British mozzarella with integrity. It pays homage to Campania, but it is not trying to pretend to be Italian. It is Somerset milk, Somerset land, Somerset hands.

And hands matter. Even if the dairy expands one day, Jonathan says the stretching should remain handmade.

“I don’t think I’d ever get a machine stretch.”

That is the point. This cheese has learnt slowly. Mistakes have been made by hand, understood by hand, improved by hand.

The future? Jonathan thinks British buffalo will remain niche. But niche does not mean insignificant. It means meaningful. It means food with a face, a farm, a family and a reason to exist.

Asked what real cheese means in one line, Jonathan answers simply:

“Full flavour satisfaction.”

That will do nicely.

Find Buffalicious at good Cheesemongers including 2poundstreet.com in Wendover plus at Buffalicious Dairy, West Country Water Buffalo Yeovil BA22 8LS

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