History

The current Stock Spirits Group was established in 2007 from the combination of Eckes & Stock and Polmos Lublin, under the control of Oaktree Capital Management. Our beginnings, however, date back to the 19th century, in what was the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

In 1884, Lionello Stock formed the Camis & Stock company in Trieste, and began to distribute drinks throughout Europe. The Company’s flagship ‘cognac’ was so good that it competed with French alternatives. By the 1920s Camis & Stock was one of the largest companies of its kind in Europe.

When the Austro-Hungarian Empire was broken up after the end of the First World War, Camis & Stock began to develop relationships in new markets. In 1920 it bought a distillery in Plzen Bozkov, in what is now the Czech Republic. In the following decade Camis & Stock constructed distilleries, bottling plants and ageing facilities in Italy, Austria, Poland, Hungary and The Balkans. In 1939, on the cusp of the Second World War, the Company looked to the United States for expansion and established an outpost in New York.

While the Stock brand was being established, the foundations were being laid for the other businesses that would later come together to form the Stock Spirits Group. The most notable of these was Polmos Lublin, which was founded in 1906. Nationalised in 1948, the company was re-privatised in 2001 and was floated on the Warsaw Stock Exchange in 2005, before being acquired by Oaktree in 2006.

Subsequently, in 2007 Oaktree Capital Management bought the spirits business of Eckes & Stock to create the core of what is the Stock Spirits Group today.