Vito Volpe stretches the mozzarella cheese he makes at his kitchen in Pompano Beach. He also makes burrata, ricotta, scamorza and many others. (Libby Volgyes/The Palm Beach Post)

When Vito Volpe was a very young lad growing up in the small southern Italian village of Conversano, he would tell his father he didn’t feel well enough to farm so he could stay in the warm kitchen and help his mother make cheese.

“I loved my mother. I didn’t like to go out picking olives,” he remembers.

As the youngest of four, this often worked. Still, he’d rise at 5 a.m. to help his mother for a few hours before going to school.

Fifty one years later, Vito still rises at early – 4:30 a.m. in the summer and

3:30 a.m. in the winter. But instead of just making cheese for his family, he provides to specialty markets all over South Florida his own brand of cheese: Mozzarita.

“I like to eat the cheese, that’s how I got started,” recalls the cheese maker who lives in Boca Raton.

His family farmed (olives, cherries, grapes and olive oil) and made everything themselves, including bread and pasta.

“I come from a town where there’s a lot of cheese makers – my mother, my father, they used to make cheese from our sheep,” he said.

In 1972, at age 16, he moved from Italy to Hicksville, N.Y., with his father because jobs were scarce in Italy. He worked in imports, in restaurants, at dairies, always making cheese.

He moved to Florida in 1995 and concluded that nobody made “good mozzarella” so he decided he would . He makes his cheese by hand in Pompano Beach, working with his wife, Lucrezia. His hands are submerged in hot water for most of the day. They’re callused and used to the uncomfortable temperature. His hands know instinctively how much mozzarella to cut off, perfectly proportioned, time and time again.

A tomato and mozzarella salad topped with basil and olive oil (left); An arugula salad with Volpe's burrata cheese topped simple with olive oil and sea salt. (Libby Volgyes/The Palm Beach Post)

“I’d rather do it by hand. The mozzarella comes with the love,” Volpe said.

Three times a week he delivers to Whole Foods as well as Howard’s Market in Boca Raton, Joseph’s Classic Market, Norman Brothers in Miami, Boca West Country Club. During season, he makes between 7,000 and 8,000 pounds of cheese a week.

Not just his exquisite mozzarella. He makes creamy burrata. ricotta. smoked, all-natural mozzarella, scamorza (cow’s milk cheese which is dried for two to three weeks), mild basket cheese and knotted nodini, among other types.

“I love the satisfaction when people try my cheese and they like it,” says Volpe, who dreams of expanding his business into the larger chain supermarkets.

If she were still alive, Volpe knows his mother would be so proud of her son, still making cheese just like she taught him.

“My mother was very proud. She always loved me more than the other kids,” Volpe laughs.

Mozzarita can also be found online at www.mozzarita.com.