TOMALES, California — Craig Ramini, a former software consultant who made national news when he bought a herd of water buffalo and made fresh buffalo mozzarella on his farm in Tomales, died Jan. 17 at the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center of complications from non-Hodgkins lymphoma. He was 57.
In 2009, Ramini was working in Silicon Valley when he decided to combine his entrepreneurial instincts with his love of animals, nature and food to fill the void in the dairy market for fresh, American-made mozzarella.
Leaving a successful tech career, he bought five water buffalo and started a small dairy farm with the dream of becoming one of the first Americans to successfully make the porcelain-white cheese that melted in his mouth when he first tasted it as a teenager visiting Italy.
The New York Times called him “the latest American adventurer hellbent on making fresh buffalo mozzarella — one of the very few people in the United States currently brave or foolish enough to do so.”
Ramini quickly discovered that unlike domestic Italian water buffalo, the ones in this country are practically feral, are expensive to raise and produce a fraction of the amount of milk as a dairy cow. Making matters worse, water buffalo are ornery and don’t like to be milked.
“He has been thrown by his beasts, teased by other dairymen and spent a lot of time worrying about the creatures’ feelings,” a 2012 article in the Wall Street Journal said.
But Ramini’s philosophy was that “if you start with honesty, simplicity and passion, success will follow,” according to his wife, Audrey.
It took a few years before he had enough milk to begin making cheese, but his perseverance paid off. In 2013, Marin’s top agricultural official singled out Ramini’s mozzarella as “the newest type of cheese” in the county. The company, Ramini Mozzarella, is in its third year of cheese production.
“We now have a consistently good working recipe and technique for making local fresh mozzarella that is worthy of comparison to the wonderful mozzarella di bufala that is made in Italy,” according to the Ramini Mozzarella website.
Among the restaurants the company supplies are Bar Bocce in Sausalito, Pizzalina in San Anselmo and Farmshop in Larkspur.
Born in Burlington, Vermont, in 1957, Ramini attended the University of Vermont, where he played shortstop on the baseball team. He went on to play minor league ball in the Cape Cod League and the Blue Mountain League and was on the Yankee Conference All-Star Team.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by his father, Dr. Henry Ramini of North Shore Boston, Massachusetts. He also leaves brothers Michael, Scott and Sean and a sister, Linda. They live in Massachusetts and Maine.
A memorial service will be at 1:30 Friday at Fernwood Cemetery in Mill Valley. Memorial donations may be made to buffalo support at gofundme.com/i9b7jc.
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