A family distillery that crossed the Aegean.

Babatzim is the trading name of the Babatzimopoulos family’s distillery and winery in northern Greece. The company dates its story to 1875 in Constantinople, today’s Istanbul. In its own timeline it says the Babatzimopoulos brothers founded the business there, and that the family planted a large vineyard at Delionés near Silivri, on the Sea of Marmara, with a distillery making wine and raki; the wine, the company says, was exported. Athens Voice, reporting in December 2018, named the founder as Anestis Babatzimopoulos, son of Stavros, and the grandfather of the man who later ran the firm.

The Greek exodus from Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace after 1922 uprooted the business. The company says the family settled in Greece and kept distilling, turning to ouzo; Athens Voice reported that the firm first re-established itself at Chrysoupoli, in the Kavala region of eastern Macedonia. The family later moved its work to the Thessaloniki area, where its offices are today.

The name itself comes from that Ottoman past. The company says Μπαμπατζίμ, which it spells Babatzim in Latin letters, is Turkish for “our respected father”, an affectionate form of address, and that its ouzo still follows the recipe of the founding great-grandfather. It describes the business as four generations of one family.

The company’s timeline says that in 1954 Theodora Babatzimopoulou took over the family tradition with her children, Anestis and Margarita. Anestis Babatzimopoulos went on to lead the business. In 1980, the company says, it opened a winery and bottling plant at Anchialos, a village outside Thessaloniki that it describes as a refuge for families from Eastern Rumelia; its factory is still there.

A respectful nickname, a bottled tsipouro and a family name on the label.

Babatzim’s identity rests on two names: the Turkish-derived brand, and the family behind it. The company uses the name in both Greek and Latin letters on its website. Its range is built around ouzo, in a standard and a Classic version, and tsipouro, the unaged grape-pomace spirit of northern Greece, made both with and without anise.

The defining product arrived in 1988. Ta Nea reported in December 2018 that in that year the company presented Tsipouro Makedonias. The company links the launch to Greece’s later protection of its spirits’ names in the European Union.

The timeline records a steady widening of the range. The company says it launched a tsipouro without anise in 1999, with wild herbs added during the second distillation, and began ageing spirits for the first time in 2002. It also makes single-variety grape spirits from varieties including Xinomavro, Roditis, Malvasia and Moschato.

Wine is the second half of the business. Ta Nea and Athens Voice reported that Anestis Babatzimopoulos planted a first trial vineyard in 1971 at Ossa, in the Lagadas area on the slopes of Mount Vertiskos, about 32 kilometres from Thessaloniki; the company’s own timeline dates its organic vineyard there to 1974 and calls it the first organic vineyard in Greece. Both newspapers say that in 1984 he released a rosé from the Xinomavro grape, and that in 2000 the company opened a winery to visitors. Its SEAOP profile lists white, red and rosé wines from the estate’s organically grown grapes, among them Xinomavro, Malagouzia, Roditis and Syrah, made at a winery set in the middle of the Ossa vineyard.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are drinks names from Greece, Cyprus and Turkey: Barbayanni, Vallindras, KEO, Mythos, Babatzim, Efe Rakı and Tekirdağ Rakı. Around the eastern Mediterranean, anise spirits, grape spirits, citron liqueur, wine and beer sit at many different points in the trade, from family houses that still carry a founder’s name to labels that began inside a state monopoly or now belong to much larger drinks groups.

A drinks brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the town where it started. That makes the plain questions worth asking: who started it, who owns it now, and where its drinks are actually distilled, brewed or bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its drinks are made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A third generation hands over to a fourth.

Anestis Babatzimopoulos was also a public figure in northern Greek wine. Ta Nea reported that he was a founding member and the first president of the Union of Wine Producers of the Vineyard of Northern Greece, which credited him with helping to introduce the ideas of wine roads and wine tourism to the country. The company’s Ossa winery is a member of the Wine Roads network, according to its profile with SEAOP, the association of Greek spirits producers.

The company’s own history calls him “the Zorba of Macedonia”. He died in December 2018, Athens Voice and Ta Nea reported. The company says his son, Christos Babatzimopoulos, took over that year and now runs the distillery, the organic vineyard and the winery. The business remains in the Babatzimopoulos family, with offices in Thessaloniki and its factory at Anchialos; its SEAOP profile describes the Ossa winery as having its own vinification, ageing and bottling areas and a tasting room.

The family story is the brand story. The Babatzim website opens with the date 1875 and the great-grandfather who, it says, first distilled his ouzo in Constantinople, and its timeline runs from Silivri through the population exchange to the Macedonian estate.

For a design guide, Babatzim shows how a family surname, an Ottoman-era nickname and a single landmark product can carry a small distillery’s identity across a century and a border. Compare Tsilili, the bottled tsipouro of Raxa in Trikala, and Ouzo 12, another ouzo with Constantinople roots. For this guide we use Thermaic blue, anise cream and vine gold with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Babatzim’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.