Two-player games, two-figure price tags, and one very expensive dartboard: luxury has re-discovered the table.
Hospitality brands have always sold what goes in the glass. This autumn they are selling what sits next to it: a board, a pair of dice, and a reason to put your phone face down.
Meet the Boards
Silver Oak, the Napa and Alexander Valley winery best known for its Cabernet Sauvignon, has teamed with Throwing Doubles, a Los Angeles luxury game brand founded in 2022 by Brittany Weinke that makes backgammon sets in Italian leather, handmade in LA. The result: 100 backgammon sets in a custom Cabernet-red colorway with an embossed Silver Oak wordmark, each paired with a bottle of 2022 Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, for $450. They launched with a party at 7 Spring in New York and went on sale October 15 through the winery.
Old Fitzgerald, the Heaven Hill bourbon brand from Bardstown, Kentucky, has partnered with designer and potter Jonathan Adler, the New York maker of pattern-loving, playful home goods. Their limited-edition backgammon set borrows Old Fitzgerald’s signature greens and a brushed brass key inspired by its tagline “Your Key to Hospitality.” It costs $425 (the bourbon is sold separately) and orders placed by December 14 should arrive before the holidays. Quantities were not disclosed.
Rimowa, the German aluminum luggage maker, is the outlier: its Dartboard Case, built with professional dartboard maker Winmau, puts a tournament Blade X board and two sets of darts inside a double-door grooved-aluminum cabinet. It launched July 30 at $6,300 (Rimowa’s US page now lists $7,100), with Walton Goggins starring in the campaign film.
Behind the Dice
The brands tell the story themselves. Old Fitzgerald’s release says analog pastimes are enjoying a resurgence amid “a renewed desire to unplug, slow down and reconnect face-to-face.” Silver Oak’s release makes the same point about board games, dinner parties and long evenings around a table. It is a tidy narrative, though it comes from the sellers and not from sales data.
Backgammon is the perfect luxury game. It is old, elegant, portable and impossible to play alone. Unlike a solo screen, it needs a person opposite you, a conversation, and a drink on the side. For beverage brands it is also an extension of the product: wine and bourbon are drunk slowly, and so is a match.
Price tiers reveal the strategy. At $425 to $450, the sets are accessible gifting objects, close to what Throwing Doubles charges for its own travel boards. At $6,300 or more, the Rimowa case is a collector’s statement piece, priced at roughly 35 times the board inside it according to one retailer analysis. One is a stocking filler for good hosts; the other is a flex for a game room.
The Map to Modern Luxury
THE CURATED CALENDAR
Discover the world’s most prestigious gatherings & exhibitionsCollaboration beats advertising. Silver Oak lends a wine to a design brand, Old Fitzgerald lends a key to a designer, Rimowa lends aluminum to a dartboard maker. Each partner brings credibility the other lacks, and the object becomes the ad.
Reading the Table: Is This Really About Reconnection?
Partly. Games genuinely create shared attention, and luxury loves anything that turns time into an event. But also note the commercial logic: limited runs, bottle-and-board bundles, and a holiday-gift slot that wine and spirits brands crave. “Reconnect” sells; so does “100 sets only.”
A fair warning: a gorgeous board that sits on the shelf is just an expensive coaster. The brands that win will be the ones whose boards actually get played.
Your Move
If you are hosting this winter, the smartest luxury buy may be the least expensive one: a handsome set, a good bottle, and an invitation. The most telling detail of this trend is that luxury, after years of selling us more ways to be alone, has started to sell the other person across the table.
