Are you wearing a shibboleth?

Wine chic is a thing. And it's available - bespoke - on Stockholm's smartest shopping street. (Plus - what I'm drinking this week and more for subscribers)

Quote for a Bank Holiday

“I have had so much work to do that I have not had time to get drunk for several weeks, and, signore, my health is suffering from it”.

The opening lines of “Bouquet” by Gladys Bronwyn Stern, 1927.

Peak Male Performance

There’s a celebrated internet meme “You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like”

On TV it was embodied by James Gandolfini.

In wine… peak male performance is my friend Gareth Birchley.

You might be thinking I’m joking. And here’s a side-eye at “pale, male, stale” men in wine and their fashion.

You’d be wrong.

This really is what peak male performance looks like. And what you see there… ladies and gentlemen, is “fashion”.

I have proof.

Gareth isn’t just a brilliantly successful wine merchant and importer, a great cook, friend, and now dad (he’s married to another old colleague of mine). He was also Just Giving’s top male fundraiser at the London marathon in 2023 raising £271,000 for Motor Neurone Disease and The Broad Appeal. More than a quarter of a million pounds. That is objectively peak male performance.

Gareth also something of a style leader. He has long been known for his “wine merchant chic”. Boots, jeans, a proper shirt with a collar. And a Schoffel gilet. Always - or almost always - a Schoffel gilet.

More properly the “Oakham Fleece”. And hundreds of other wine people - in the UK at least - wear the same:

In fact, one could almost say it’s a “shibboleth”. The word originates from a biblical story (Book of Judges, chapter 12) where pronunciation of “shibboleth” identified friend from foe. Gileadite from Ephramite.

With clothes, a shibboleth is a subtle (or sometimes obvious) marker that shows you belong to a particular group. Red corduroy trousers among gay men in 60’s London. Or the plain navy cashmere jumper from Loro Piana among the super wealthy today. Expensive but logo-less it’s recognizable only to other elites. The “stealth wealth” of the TV series Succession. Or the Barbour jacket with the “right” amount of wear and patina among the British upper-middle class. It’s even said that the subtle but specific way someone wears a scarf in Paris can signal bourgeois-bohème to others in the know.

Part of the appeal of a clothing shibboleth was that people could recognise each other without saying a word. But the word is getting out. And wine chic is spreading.

As you’ll see at Blugiallo - an stylish boutique on Birger Jarlsgarten in Stockholm, the city’s leading fashion district.

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