Who is Giovanni Campari?

I define myself as a visionary, an experimenter devoted to fermentations, but more generally an alchemist of food transformations. I have a solid scientific background but also a humanistic education.

Experiential research has always led me to travel, not to reach a destination but to cross the world and gather experiences. As in the myth of Odysseus, the journey is born from the desire to reach a destination but it turns out to be the experience as an end in itself that leads to knowledge, it is the realization of a nature that pursues adventure. There is no sense to this research, there is no purpose: the research itself is the purpose.

After graduating in Food Science and Technology at the University of Parma, I devoted myself to my great passion for beers, to transform a dream into an entrepreneurial project; in 2007, together with two partners, I founded Birrificio del Ducato and led it to become the most awarded Italian brewery ever with over 120 awards collected in national and international beer competitions from 2007 to 2019.

In 12 years I have developed innovative production methods (using ingredients, yeasts, processing and aging systems from the world of wine, sake and spirits) and highly experimental beers that have met with great success in the international community, becoming in some cases examples of style and cornerstones of new trends.

In April 2020 I sold all my shares of Birrificio del Ducato to Duvel Moortgat and resigned. Leaving Ducato was not an easy choice but I felt the need to turn the page and focus completely on my new project related to distillations.

After obtaining the General Certificate in Distilling in London, many months of testing on small stills and an experience in a renowned distillery in Alto Adige, in February 2021 I finally launched TERRA WILD SPIRITS, a traveling distillery project that aims to bring the terroir into spirits and liqueurs.

The same year I started with my dear Canadian friend André Trudel, a former brewer with whom I have always shared a solid friendship and a production philosophy very similar to mine, “The Wine Brewers” a project of natural garagiste wines.

In my working life I have had many entrepreneurial experiences, sometimes achieving ambitious goals, but not all of them turned out to be successes and it was precisely from failures that I learned the most important lessons.

After much traveling I finally understood that I had to return to my land, and I settled in the small family farm in the province of Parma. Here a vineyard will be built, a fermentation cellar and a laboratory where many projects will be born, always consistent with my vision and with the values of Terra Wild Spirits.