The Chinese Water Deer are a small breed, growing to only half a metre or so. I would tower over them, their tiny legs trembling in the shadow of my own. The Chinese Water Deer are shy in character, or so I am told, their latin name—hydropotes inermis—roughly translating to unarmed water drinker, or without armour, on account of their lack of antlers.

Instead, tusks jut out from the corners of their mouths, giving their small faces the distinct appearance of a walrus crossed with a teddy bear. The Chinese Water Deer are named as such because, as with all things in Britain, they want you to know what is from here and what is not, what is imported and therefore foreign. What has been taken.

Bairds Malt

Across the pond, cousins of the Water Deer are being paid a great deal of attention to by the Chinese-American artist Tyrus Wong. Wong’s sparse and lyrical style of landscape painting suits the mysterious movement of our deer and their seasons, his work greatly influencing the 1942 Disney animated motion picture, Bambi. Toys, soft and small like the children they cater to, take on the deer’s form. A decade later Audrey Hepburn is photographed cradling her pet fawn, Pippin, in the aisles of a supermarket. Deer are a must-have accessory, haven’t you heard?

The Water Deer as playthings and collectables, a muse for the creation of characters small and shy and sweet—think nothing of the fact the species are known fighters—submissive to the status and symbolism harnessed by those craving positions of power. What better animal, then, to align with the feminine sex?

***

The Showering family made no secret of the fact they set out to make and market a drink exclusively for women. But, as with most societal decisions involving women, it is the men we must look to first.

Shepton Mallet is situated in the limestone shadow of the Mendip Hills and it is here in this small town, additionally home to the world's oldest prison, that the Showerings family have resided since the 17th century, making their living as shoemakers and hotelkeepers. As time evolved so did the Showerings, and the 19th century saw the family take on new roles in the town, as brewers and cidermakers.

Francis Showering was landlord of the Black Swan in Shepton Mallet’s town centre and in 1843, when a neighbouring pub, The Ship Inn, caught fire it was Francis who came to the rescue, assisted by eight of his shoe making employees—old occupations die hard, it would seem. After the dust had settled Francis made a deal to purchase the destroyed property and its accompanying land—a site that would go on to be the initial premises and subsequent home of the Showerings Brewing Company.

Francis’ son, Albert, married Ethel and together the couple had four sons: Arthur, born in 1899; Herbert, born in 1906; Ralph, born in 1909; and Francis, junior, born in 1912. By this point the family business consisted of a brewery and a cidery and these products were delivered, alongside local mineral water, by horse driven vehicles to anyone within an eight mile radius of the sites. But with the end of the First World War came opportunities for growth, and a need for expansion and innovation. Here our band of brothers stepped in.

Arthur, the eldest, was put in charge of brewing. Herbert went on to become chairman, Ralph took on sales and marketing and then Francis, who originally left the town to pursue a career in engineering, returned to be head of the production and chemistry side of the business. Four brothers working together would seem like a recipe for disaster to most, but the opposite was true, as Francis himself once explained.

“People often used to remark [that] they could not understand why four brothers got on so well together and never quarrelled,” said Francis Showering in a 1983 edition of The Grapevine, a newspaper published annually by Showerings, Vine Products and Whiteways Ltd.

“Well the answer was simple really. We often had very different points of view and sometimes we argued quite furiously but the fact was that each of us had every penny we possessed tied up in the business and we just could not afford to fall out, and we never did.”

Not long after the prodigal son's return, Francis started paying particular attention to the company’s perry production. But before we get into that, what, exactly, is perry?

***

Perry is an alcoholic drink made from fermented pear juice and therefore differs greatly from cider, an alcoholic drink made from fermented apple juice. Although you can understand and forgive those who band the two together. Both are made from orchard fruit that must be picked and pressed, the juice carefully stored as it begins fermenting into alcohol. Perry, however, is distinguished from cider in some crucial ways. Pears taste different from apples, after all.

“Occasionally certain perries made from certain varieties reach out and touch certain ciders made from certain apples,” says Adam Wells, author of Perry: A Drinker’s Guide.

“But in my experience it's just as common, if not more so, for a perry to remind me of the flavours of certain white wines. Thorn Pear's green fruit, grass and elderflower flavours, for instance, often make me think of Sauvignon Blancs (though their structure is quite different) and when I first got into perry I was repeatedly struck by how clearly varieties like Blakeney Red and Hendre Huffcap often reminded me of Chenin Blancs from the Loire.”

So it was Perry, a drink rarely granted an identity of its own, often aligned with its neighbouring cider and wine, that Francis Showering turned his chemical expertise to. The aim being to produce a new kind of drink for a new kind of drinker.

“I came up with a clear, natural perry which I thought would fit the bill perfectly. It was sparkling, inexpensive and not too long but not too short. Every man knew what he wanted, a pint of beer, but the ladies had little choice and they often ended up with a port and lemon. The new drink was perfect for them,” Francis said.

““It was time for Babycham to enter the world. Let’s go, girls.””

This clear, sparkling perry was formulated in 1946 and subsequently submitted to the Three Counties Agricultural Show in Worcester where it won first prize, and would continue to claim the gold in every major agricultural show in the country for the next three years. By 1953 the brothers decided the product was fit for commercial sale, and Champagne de la Poire—as it had been referred to up to this point—was ready. The only problem was the name.

Can you get me a Champagne de la Poire? Oh I’m gasping for a Champagne de la Poire. See if they have Champagne de la Poire, will you? I imagine my friends echoing these sentences back to me at the bar, laughing over the way I pronounce poire. Oooh there she goes, Champagne de la PWAAH. French for pear, of course. But it doesn’t matter. The damage is done. I’ll just get a port and lemon, please.

What was there to be gained from the original name? Whilst perry may not be a familiar household name, Champagne certainly is. That intoxicating sparkling wine, made from the Champagne method in the Champagne region of France, furiously protected and socially coveted. Champagne is defined by desire, by a thirst for fun and flirtation, an ache for money and power, a longing for sex and sensuality. Champagne possesses a divine status in the world of wine, that other drinks can only imitate, desperately modelling their aesthetic around that of Champagne, aspiring for a glimpse of success in its seraphic shadow.

“It's amazing how often throughout history that perry has nodded towards Champagne. Napoleon's 'champagne of the English' quote refuses to die and will probably be repeated in perry marketing forever—even though I've never seen any actual evidence for it,” Adam tells me.

“But history is littered with genuine comparisons between the two. Fruit nurseries outside New York and Boston in the 1820s and 1830s advertise perry pear varieties like Huffcap, Taynton Squash and Barland as ‘for Perry, said to afford a liquor equal to champagne.’ 19th century English wine merchants were certainly filling or topping up champagne bottles with perry to increase profits. And most deliciously of all there are records at the Musée du Poiré in the Domfrontais in Normandy of perry being taken by train to champagne itself, for the same reason.”

So you see it was important for the Showering brothers to keep the reference to Champagne, but if not Champagne de la Poire, what else?

Thankfully an alternative name was already being used. Be it short for champion or champagne, Baby Champ—as the legend goes—was the term used by workers in the factory to distinguish the smaller individual bottles of Champagne de la Poire from their larger siblings. This term of endearment was overheard in an early marketing meeting held at the premises and adopted as a result. Baby Champ, then, became Babycham.

Ralph Showering, you may recall, had been appointed head of sales and marketing, a position he did not take lightly. The Showerings family had purchased a small herd of Water Deer from Herbrand Arthur Russell, the 11th Duke of Bedford, for their growing property and it was here that Ralph took inspiration for Babycham’s logo.

An illustrated version of the deer, mirroring Tyrus Wong’s Bambi in style, was created, adorned with a bow and framed within a sea of light, shimmering opal blue. The glass of the bottles were emerald green in colour, designed to contain enough liquid to perfectly fit into a Champagne style coupe glass.

It was time for Babycham to enter the world. Let’s go, girls.

***

A bow—floppy, dusty blue in colour and so large it resembles a prized rosette—drapes around the neck of our Water Deer, now a cute and compact cartoon that can pose no threat in its controlled, animated form. Our Water Deer is faced with a mountain range of party hats, and can be seen nimbly jumping from one peak to another before landing on the drum of a tambourine. This, too, our Water Deer takes in its stride, prancing to the beat with a rhythm Michael Flatley would be envious of. A fleet of balloons greet our Water Deer next, glossy, reflective surfaces to be quickly preened in before the scene bursts with the sharp contact of a hoof.

“Babycham?” A man asks a woman sitting at the bar.

“Oh I’d love a Babycham,” she responds enthusiastically.

“Everyone loves a Babycham!” the man exclaims as the camera pans out revealing beautiful couples enjoying a glass of everyone's favourite champagne perry. Babycham makes the party, indeed.

The above is taken from a 1956 television advert for Babycham. Not only was this one of the first televised adverts for Babycham, it was the first televised advert for an alcoholic product, full stop. Babycham was well and truly entering the market with a splash, and our Water Deer, now referred to nationally as the Babycham Deer, was free to go on all manners of adventures.

Within six weeks of the televised advert it was reported that almost every off-licence in London was stocking Babycham, and soon every major city in the UK followed suit.

A 1957 advert shows the Babycham deer discovering the joy of tennis, providing a much needed refreshment to those participating in the strenuous pastime. Two years later our Babycham Deer turns its head to magic tricks, conjuring up bouquets of flowers and summoning the distinct small green glass bottles of Babycham to accompany two empty coupe glasses.

"Genuine Champagne Perry! The Babycham bottle fills a Champagne glass! For only 1 and 3!"

Babycham is playful, they are saying, look how small and sweet and social our deer is. Don’t you want to feel as blissfully curious and content as our Babycham deer, they are asking? The happiest drink in the world can make you the happiest person in the world. Everyone loves a Babycham, after all.

And then, in 1960, there is a shift.

We start with a close up of a full champagne glass, effervescent in excitement, and quickly zoom out to reveal a beautiful, blonde woman taking a first sip before continuing to do so over the course of a dazzling party. For the first time our animated Babycham Bambi is nowhere to be seen, reduced to the last few seconds, once our party girl has had her fun, first.

There she is! Having fun. She loves a party. Ask her, ask any girl. She’s sure to say: I’d love a Babycham!

The priorities behind Babycham marketing have changed, no longer is the message focused on the whimsical adventures of an animated deer, cute and cartoon and childlike in its playfulness. Instead the focus is on the beauty of the woman drinking Babycham. They are saying, see how fun and popular and sophisticated she is? How Babycham adds glamour? Don’t you want people to think that about you? Isn’t it about time that you, too, became a Babycham girl?

* * *

Your week has been hard, having to negotiate your boss when at work and your housemates when at home. And as if that wasn’t enough your current dating pool is causing you to lose hope in ever getting a marriage as stable as your parents. (Speaking of which they’ve been nagging you an awful lot lately.) The world may be chaos to a girl like you, but look here, it’s okay, a guide has been laid out before you. It turns out it’s not hard to survive being a girl after all, you just have to follow someone else’s lead.

There are 24 stages to the Babycham Girl’s Survival Guide, split into four categories: Your Lair, Your Prey, Your Ammunition and In The Jungle, displayed across a series of coasters and pull-out leaflets that come alongside your purchase. Offshoots of the guide include a Babe Starter Beauty Kit, free with the collection of four Babycham foil tops, the Babycham 16 page guide to Palmistry, A Passion for Fashion guide and The Babycham Girl Zodiac series. Just keep drinking Babycham, they are saying, and Babycham will give you everything you need.

It doesn’t stop there. On its own, Babycham tastes soft and sweet. Like small paper bags of confected pear drops, like a punnet of white grapes on a hot summer's day, like catching peach juice threatening to drip from your lips with the tip of your tongue. Honeysuckle mixes with elderflower and blossoms into the scent of blooming white lilies. If you could wear Babycham as a perfume, you would. But just like girls can be transformed with the help of Babycham, so too can Babycham reach a new lease of life with the help of other drinks.

The Babycham Cocktail Guide is described as a “sparkling idea” and the transformative possibilities are endless. Babycham Florida is the sun fuelled combination of Babycham and Orange Juice, a Babycham Stinger is the slightly more sophisticated concoction of Babycham, brandy and angostura bitters and the Babycham Black Mist is the mischievous mix of a bottle of Babycham with half a pint of Guinness.

These cocktails are then ascribed to you via your zodiac sign which in turn lets you know what star sign you should be looking out for in order to attract the man of your dreams. With Babycham, life really is as simple as taking note of the stars.

As an Aquarius I am depicted with long blonde hair—all Babycham girls are white—a large hat placed on my head, a Babycham coupe in hand. “Yours is the sign of friends, hopes and wishes,” Babycham tells me. “Whenever there’s a happy group gathered together you’re likely to be in the centre of it. And somewhere in your large circle of friends there’s sure to be a Sagittarian. Together you could prove to be more than just good friends.”

“The Aquarius girl wears fun fashion clothes to parties or anything ethnic—something a little bit different!” the Babycham Guide to Your Zodiac reads. “Aquarians are a delight for party givers loving salads, kebabs, barbecues—anything easy to prepare—and that applies to their special cocktail…”

Babycham Aquarius Allure
Measure ¾ oz Harvey’s Bristol Cream Sherry and ¼ oz Crabbies Green Ginger Wine into a tumbler containing a little ice. Stir together, then pour in ½ bottle Babycham.

The Babycham Girl wants to be successful, popular and well-loved within her world but must feel helpless within the workings of society. The Babycham Girl is thin and beautiful, able bodied and from white, western cultures.

At work she is up against it, but knows how to flirt her way out of trouble. In fashion she is sharp and sexy without being too provocative, and when it comes to dating she is a skilled hunter, possessing everything she needs to track down her prey. As our heroine strives for survival in a man’s world there she appears, confident, charismatic and charming, but crucially and steadfastly, still a girl.

The generosity of Babycham knows no bounds. Babycham worked to assist helpless girls in creating a public identity. Babycham became an indication of certain values and desires that others can cater and accommodate to.

A string of commercials in the mid 1970s show the British actor Patrick Mower frequenting parties, surrounded by beautiful women, flirtatiously pressing the ice cold glass of a Babycham coupe against the bare leg of a woman as she sunbathes. Babycham means girls, he shrugs at the camera.

The female sex are infantilised to the point where they are unable to act, unable to think without the help of their beloved Babycham, and Babycham tells men they can use this to their advantage. By drinking Babycham, the transition from girlhood to womanhood is placed on ice, and gender stereotypes are entrenched in the process. Girls find themselves entrapped in this state of helplessness, victims of their chosen consumption.

This isn’t news. Around the same time as Babycham was catering to girlhood, Like Soda was launched—a sugar free soda flavoured with lemon and lime and sweetened with cyclamate. “The first soft drink just for girls,” the caption reads. “Yesterday… women's suffrage, today… a soft drink just for girls, progress never comes easy, smile.” When Cyclamate was banned in 1969 the drink was discontinued, only to be reformulated with a new sweetener and re-released with a new name: Diet 7-UP.

It’s language mirrored today. “Girl maths,” “girl walks,” “girl dinner,” “just girlboss things!” The internet is rife with the avoidance of womanhood; a refusal to accept the responsibilities and requirements that come hand in hand with being an adult. To be a girl, to cling onto girlhood in the face of nature through the products you buy and the language you refer to yourself, when you could be embracing the profound wonders of womanhood, is nothing new.

Is this what it is then, to be female? This cyclical consistency of embracing youth, popularising it to the point where you cannot move for it, only for the next generation to reject it and the generation after that to return running to the arms of being a girl. On and on and on until the sun engulfs us. Is it really so awful to be a woman?

* * *

Drinking, especially in the UK, is rarely about the drink itself, and therein lies Babycham’s problem.

Whether they like it or not, whether they must be dragged kicking and screaming across the threshold, girls will eventually become women. And they’ll bring their favourite brands with them. Babycham is no longer being drunk by girls, but by the mothers of girls, and by their grandmothers. And when girls are taught to fear womanhood with such ferocity, who can blame them for not wanting to drink like the generations that raised them?

“Babycham, like a secret recipe, is something that is passed on from a mother to a daughter once she’s reached a certain age. It’s a kind of passport to the adult world,” says Babycham’s marketing manager Gary Holloway in an interview with Phil Mellows for The Morning Advertiser in the early 1990s.

“But because mother drinks it, because it's friendly, warm and safe it’s created a bit of a problem. Big girls don’t drink Babycham.”

Big girls don’t drink Babycham. And as a result sales of Babycham, having risen to such dizzying heights, began, quite drastically, to fall. So what’s a brand to do about it?

““On and on and on until the sun engulfs us. Is it really so awful to be a woman?””

Babycham tried everything. They moved our Babycham deer from its prominent front and centre position on the label to an almost trademark position, a rejection of the cute and Disney-esque qualities now associated with the brand, but a guarding of it as point of reference, nevertheless.

Television adverts, having worked effortlessly in decades previously, were now put to work to acknowledge Babycham’s lack of coolness—sunglasses are placed on the deer as it enters a “trendy joint,” a couple in dated clothes from the 60s enter a packed nightclub and ask for a Babycham, only for the crowds of cool and beautiful customers to join them. Make Babycham Cool Again, they are trying to say. But there it stayed, trapped within the strong clutches of nostalgia.

In those post-war years Babycham’s marketing and imagery, that aspirational blue that shone so bright, was dazzling for the services it provided: for acknowledging the new place girls were taking in a post-war society, for providing a social identity to the gender so often rendered second-rate, for allowing the illusion of choice and autonomy in a post-suffragette feminist movement. Babycham sold not just itself, but the idea that a more sparkling personality was only ever a drink away, that being feminine was fun and could be used to your advantage if you played your cards right.

When I look at Babycham now, as I read through its instructions on how to tackle life, I don’t feel like I am being armed with the tools to successfully navigate the world I move through. But that I am being serenaded with fantasy, with an idea that is as subservient and smooth as the personality I am expected to possess. To embrace the aesthetics of a Babycham Girl would be to lie about who I am, to insult the woman I want to become: sharp and interesting and able to take full responsibility for the effect my actions have on those around me.

The Babycham Girl was a lie, beautifully packaged and ingeniously sold—the age-old lie that girls are never quite perfect, but with the right product they could be.