Costco's Kirkland Wine

If you are in an area where there's a Costco, you are fortunate. They often buy excess wine from good wineries and slap their own label on it. The Costco brand is called Kirkland. I'll research the background a bit further but suffice it to say for now, it's good stuff. We had a 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa and the 2005 Signature Merlot. Both cost less than $20 and were fabulous. Of course, my taste, again, is the full body, rich dark fruits (plums, blackberries, cherries) and mocha/cocoa. Both of these had a lot of that stuff going on.

I'm telling you, it's as good as a lot of $40-60 wine I've had. The thing about Costco wine is that you never know just what you'll get. At least that's what I've heard from some of the "experts." We met a woman wine maker in Sonoma who had some inside knowledge of this. Her advice about the Kirkland wines was to buy a bottle, take it out to you car, open it and try it. If it's good, go back and buy a case or two because it won't be the same wine a week from now. When it's good, it's good, and you need to make hay while the sun shines!