Ask Chrissy, I freaking love Costco.

Virtually everything about it. The hot dog and a soda combo, for instance, is about the best value going for lunch.  $1.50 for a really good dog and a soda? Are you kidding me? And I can have it with sauerkraut?!

But I digress; this is about wine.  As a restaurant owner, I have access to wine at wholesale prices, so I rarely shop retail for wine.  Even at Costco. However, several years ago, I was turned on to Kirkland Brand Champagne which, at $20, is less expensive than I can find any Champagne at wholesale. And it is an absolutely fine Champagne.  Of course, I’ve had better (and almost always paid at least double or more to get it), but I’ve certainly had worse. In short, you can walk in off the street and buy a perfectly good bottle of Champagne for, at minimum, $5-$10 less than I can get something about as good, at wholesale.

Wine from Good Regions

Over the years, I’ve noticed more and more Kirkland brand wines from inexpensive versions of Sonoma County Chardonnay to fancier styles like Pauillac (in Bordeaux), Oakville Cabernet Sauvignon (a heralded sub-region of Napa Valley), and Brunello di Montalcino (a highly-regarded Tuscan red).  In a wine store, many of these typically start around $40-$50 retail and can go up to $100 or well more. Yet the Kirkland versions are about $20-$25.

The Kirkland Brand Wine Taste Test

One day, I decided to test these Kirkland wines. I belong to a group of local sommeliers and wine professionals who meet once a week to blind taste wine. Someone sets up six wines in six glasses for each of us, and only that one person knows what they are. The rest of us have to use our skills with colors, aromas, and tastes to figure out each wine, which can be quite a challenge. This challenge is only made somewhat easier when the wines are classic examples of their type — for example, a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc that acts exactly like a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc should. Nothing weird, nothing tricky.

So at one of these gatherings, I poured all Kirkland wines, and guess what? Each one was a near-perfect representation of its type and style. More people correctly deduced more wines during that blind tasting than any other I’ve attended. Which just goes to show you…

Costco wines are solid, reliable, and tasty (not to mention a great value).

But why does this matter to you? You probably just care about the tasty value part, right? Let me tell you — choosing a wine that does what it’s “supposed” to do, and then deciding if you like it, gives you an important reference point for figuring out what kinds of wine you want to drink. If your first exposure to say, Willamette Valley Pinot Noir, is a wine that tastes absolutely nothing like its peers, it will skew your expectation of what the next one you try should taste like.  So you’ll be no closer to actually knowing whether or not you like those wines.

Now, in fairness, Kirkland brand aren’t wines that will blow you away or rival the best examples of their style, but what do you expect?  The cheapest AND the best? Let’s be real here, if you can be the cheapest and be about as good as plenty, that’s not a bad thing to hang your hat on.

You’ll always find a bottle of Kirkland Prosecco in our fridge (though it almost always is there to be used to make Aperol Spritz, one of our favorite summer cocktails), and I’m constantly tempted by whatever “higher-end” Kirkland brand wines are available when I’m there.

I mean, I like paying half price as much as the next guy…