Baker

Arthur Arnold Baker was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1869. He entered the alcohol trade in 1898, founding A.A. Baker & Co as a spirits merchants in London. Arthur's cousin, George, was by this time living in Trieste which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. With George's help, a branch of A.A. Baker & Co was opened there in the province of Barcola, which was up and running by 1907.

The company found immediate success, blending and bottling spirits which it sold on to the the various civilian and military ships that docked in the Trieste ports from all over the world. When the Great War broke out in 1914 however, both men returned to England so seek refuge. They would return to Trieste in 1818 after it ended, but with the city now annexed to Italy, the Bakers found an entirely different economic landscape from the one they had departed, and Arthur promptly sold the company to the brothers Carlo and Guglielmo Strehler on 14th February 1919.

The Strehlers sold the company on again in 1923, and in 1931 the A.A. Baker & Co headquarters in Barcola was closed, with new premises opened in Trieste's Roiano suburb. The company operated here for the next thirty years until acquired by Antonini & Fragiacomo, who razed the buildings and built housing on them instead. They incorporated the new Baker SpA on the 1st of August that year, however the short-lived entity was shut down again in 1973.

A former company executive named Paolo Albèri made a final attempt to resurrect the brand, establishing Baker Distilleria SpA in Gorizia in 1982. It was acquired by the Querci group in 1991 and closed down later that decade.