A limited 100-unit leather backgammon set, priced at $450 and bundled with a bottle of 2022 Silver Oak Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, hits silveroak.com on October 15 — and the scarcity is very much the point. The collaboration between Silver Oak Cellars and Los Angeles luxury game maker Throwing Doubles translates the winery's 50-year brand identity into a tactile, repeatable gifting object built for the holiday entertaining calendar.
The Gifting Shift
For beverage operators and hospitality buyers, the move surfaces something worth tracking: premium wine brands are investing in physical brand extensions that outlast the bottle. The backgammon set — handmade in Los Angeles, finished in a custom Cabernet-red leather with an embossed Silver Oak wordmark — is designed to stay on the table long after the wine is gone. That durability is the strategic asset. Where a gift box or branded tote gets discarded, a well-made game becomes a recurring brand touchpoint at dinner parties, weekend gatherings, and holiday tables.
Silver Oak CMO Lauren Larrabee put it plainly: "It isn't always the big milestones. It's the dinners with friends, family traditions, and nights that people remember years later." The brand is deliberately positioning the set not as collectible shelf decor but as something portable and functional — "packed for weekends away, pulled out when friends come over," in the words of Throwing Doubles founder Brittany Weinke.
What Operators Should Watch
The $450 price point bundles a single bottle with a premium lifestyle object, effectively anchoring the wine's perceived value well above its standalone retail price. For restaurant beverage directors and hotel F&B teams exploring branded gifting or holiday retail programs, this model is instructive: pairing a consumable with a durable, design-forward object shifts the transaction from commodity to experience. It also compresses the gifting decision — one SKU, one price, one occasion.
Throwing Doubles is already distributed through Moda Operandi, Nordstrom, FWRD, and goop, as well as select luxury hotels globally. That hotel channel presence signals an obvious adjacency for hospitality buyers evaluating curated in-room gifting, spa retail, or premium amenity programs heading into Q4. A branded game that lives at a guest's home after checkout is a different kind of marketing vehicle than a logoed robe.
The analog entertainment angle also aligns with a documented consumer trend: post-pandemic dining and entertaining culture has leaned into slower, more deliberate social rituals — long dinners, board games, intentional unplugged evenings. Backgammon specifically has seen a quiet luxury-lifestyle resurgence, surfacing in boutique hotel lobbies and high-end hospitality design. Silver Oak is reading that signal correctly.
The Brand Launch Takeaway
For brand launch teams and beverage marketers, the Silver Oak x Throwing Doubles drop is a case study in scarcity-led product extension. One hundred units is a number small enough to generate urgency and editorial interest, large enough to seed the market with physical brand ambassadors. The collaboration also gives both brands access to each other's audiences — Silver Oak wine collectors encounter a premium game brand; Throwing Doubles' design-forward buyer base is introduced to a legacy Napa Cabernet.
Operators building holiday gifting programs or evaluating wine and spirits partnerships for hotel retail should look at how this collab structures the bundle: a flagship vintage, a design object with independent brand equity, and a price point that reads as considered rather than extravagant. That formula travels well beyond wine — into spirits, specialty F&B, and any category where the product is already embedded in occasion-based consumption.
For more on premium beverage strategy and holiday retail positioning, see our coverage on brand launch packaging and operator gifting intelligence.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
