Passionate and “a little crazy” to embark on such an adventure without knowing anything about it, Sophie and Michaël Christmann, from Field of buffaloes in Uhrwiller in the Bas-Rhin, have succeeded in their bet: to produce in less than four years of operation one of the very best mozzarellas in France. They are the only ones to do so in the Grand-Est region, and so few in France to produce this filleted cheese made from buffalo milk. Across the country, mozzarella producers can be counted on the fingers of three hands.
No more than fourteen are producers of their milk and process it, or cheese makers. The Alsatian couple, and this is certainly what gives them all their strength, raises buffaloes and transforms their own milk. These latter graze peacefully in the open air, in the field of a neighboring village.
And it was not easy in 2018 when they decided to quit their job as water union technician for Christian, and quality animation manager at De Dietrich for Sophie. A decision that first surprised some, sometimes reproaching them for wanting to bring dangerous animals back to the village. “I was even told that this idea deserved a donkey’s cap … I guess they confused buffaloes with African buffaloes or whatever, even though it’s true that buffalo has a certain character. Sophie Christmann smiles.
A herd of 80 buffaloes
Regardless, unconscious, they set up their financing plan, restructured their home and the family farm, met professionals, a Basque cheese tutor who had never made mozzarella, and bought buffaloes in France and Germany. . Today, they can count on a herd of “80 buffaloes including 35 to 40 mothers”, expect ten more and will significantly expand their structure to accommodate customers.
They believed in their project and they did well because they find themselves in a very buoyant market. The French have been consuming more mozzarella than camembert since this year. Almost a sacrilege in the land of cheese. “29,230 tonnes of camemberts in France have been sold since January against 33,170 tonnes of mozzarella” explained recently at Figaro Fabrice Collier, president of the Norman Union of Camemberts Manufacturers (SNFC).
Silver medal for the best mozzarella in France
Driven by their success and the feedback from customers they meet in the occasional markets, the few shops where it is sold or during direct sales at home on Saturday mornings, they know that their mozzarella as well as their other soft buffalo milk cheeses please. Their product was even crowned with the silver medal for the best mozzarella in France during a competition last April in a gastronomic program. on Paris Première. A first consecration but which above all “reinforced our feeling of legitimacy, that of doing well”, confides Sophie Christmann. Especially since “the winner is an Italian who settled near Carcassonne, the third and fourth are of Italian origin. “
If they want to keep their manufacturing secrets preciously, the Alsatians admit having groped and worked a lot before arriving at a mozzarella ” to their liking “. Slightly creamy or firmer depending on the speed between milking the milk and making the cheese, Alsatian mozzarella is above all the result of intense work and research.
“The taste may vary,” explains Sophie Christmann. It depends on the grass, the food, the water, the season, the hydrometry, the time of milking. There is no recipe, there is a basis, but afterwards you have to observe your cheese, because it reacts differently every day. There is always a critical moment, when we take the curdled milk out of the tank, cut it before putting it in the spinner. If you do not do it at the right time, you have missed your mozzarella, details the producer. And above all, you have to obtain consistency in the product despite all these components… ”These are all parameters that the couple quickly learned to manage. And even excellently well can we add to have tasted it.