We Answer 10 Important Questions About Costco Liquor

There's a lot to love about Costco's liquor selection. Not only is it affordable, but the selection on Costco shelves is stellar. Keep a varied mix of bottles on hand at your home bar, or buy a case to keep in the closet for those times you find yourself needing to take a gift to a dinner party, family gathering, or impromptu game night with friends, and you're not going to go wrong. While customers seem to have strong feelings about the best and worst of Kirkland liquors, plenty are in agreement that Costco is the place to go.

It's no secret that if you're lucky, you can also find some rare bottles on Costco's shelves. Did you ever wonder if there was a way you could know what your local Costco has in stock before you get there? Or if you really are getting the great deal that everyone says you are? And while we're on the subject of questions, what's the real story behind Costco's vodka, anyway? The Kirkland Signature vodka has taken home some serious wins when it comes to taste tests, so it's got to be Grey Goose in disguise ... right? 

We're going to take a look at these questions and more in our deep dive into Costco liquors, and here's the thing: It's a little challenging. Costco is notoriously secretive about some of their products, including the big names behind the Kirkland Signature label. But we did dig up some incredibly interesting answers to some of your Costco liquor questions.

Customers famously buy so many food court dogs that Costco hot dog sales surpass all Major League Baseball stadiums. That's a big deal when it comes to profits, but what does the chain's bottom line look like for liquor sales? According to Forbes, it involves numbers that are just as shocking.

In an estimate of 2023 profits, Costco brought in somewhere between $6.5 and $7 billion in the sales of alcohol, and about a quarter of that was in liquor. (About half of that was in wine sales, which isn't entirely surprising: In addition to some legitimately good boxed wine, Costco sells some of the world's rarest wines, too.) The balance of that is made up by beer sales, but how many unique products are on the store's shelves?

That, too, is also a little unclear, but it does seem to vary. The number of SKUs rises during the holidays, and at any given time, Costco has between 45 and 60 SKUs dedicated to various types and brands of spirit, compared to the 150-odd wine SKUs. There are 17 states where it is prohibited for Costco to sell liquor, but if you're fortunate enough to live in a state where they do, you'll have a wide selection to choose from.

Costco is able to keep its prices lower than most retailers because of a few factors, including a limited stock and income from membership costs. Customers know they're going to be getting a good deal on countless items when they head to Costco, but does that apply to liquor, too? Absolutely it does, and on average, Costco sells alcohol at only between a 10% and 14% markup. 

That only means something when it's in the context of what you'll find at other stores, and in most cases, the bare minimum markup that most liquor stores employ is about 25%. And that's just the start. Rarer liquors and wines — along with craft beers — might be marked up as much as 50% by more traditional liquor stores.

If you go to your favorite neighborhood bar for a cocktail, you're probably looking at around an 80% markup. If you're ordering a round of shots, that gets even higher: In a bar, you can expect to pay between a 400% and 500% markup for that shot. Bars and restaurants, of course, have a ton of overhead that has to be covered, but it really puts things in perspective when you're shopping at a place like Costco.

In 2024, Costco announced that it was increasing membership fees for the first time since 2017, and let's be honest: It can be tough to decide whether or not you're going to get enough use out of a membership to spring for one. When it comes to liquor, you may have heard that you don't need a membership to buy it, but that sounds almost too good to be true, doesn't it?

Whether or not that's the case varies, and that's because of state laws. In a nutshell, some states have laws in place that don't allow stores that sell memberships to block non-member access to the same deals on liquor. You'll need to explain that you're only there to buy alcohol and unfortunately, this only applies in a very, very limited number of states. Specifically, it only works if you're in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Texas, or Vermont. Anywhere else, and you're out of luck without a membership.

Collecting rare or expensive liquors can be a fun — albeit expensive — hobby, and it turns out that there are a number of rare bottles that can occasionally be found on the shelves of Costco. Knowing Costco's method behind allocating these rare bottles might help you get your hands on one or two, but the company seems pretty secretive about it. 

However, Costco customers and bottle-hunters suggest that they've spotted some trends. If you happen to be in affluent areas of New York or California, for example, you're more likely to see the high-priced bottles showing up on shelves than you would at a Costco club in, say, the rural Midwest. In other cases, it seems regional: Bourbons, for example, tend to hit shelves first in the southeast. Other customers have noticed that a club's proximity to ethnic communities has something to do with it as well. If you're looking for a Japanese whiskey, for example, a Costco located in an area with a large Asian community is more likely to have it.

That said, there's something else you can try, too: Go to a grand opening. Not all grand openings will have rare bottles on hand, but the high-profile, highly-publicized ones do tend to have a very limited number of rare and highly sought after liquors. You'll need to get there early, though, as it's only the first few people in line who might have a shot at buying one.

Some of Costco's rare liquors are still exactly that — rare. In 2023, one Redditor found a rare bottle of 10-year-old Rip Van Winkle, and when they posted the find online, they also shared the fact that one of the employees at the Costco confirmed that they had only received three bottles. Being able to keep an eye on Costco's liquor stock from your own home would be great, especially considering what's in-store rotates on a regular basis. 

Costco doesn't post alcohol stock online, though, and it sort of makes sense. By the time rare bottles are posted, someone's probably already grabbed them off the shelves, and that's going to result in a lot of angry customers who missed the limited bottles. For less rare stuff, though, one Redditor shared a trick that may or may not work for you, depending on your location.

Get on the Costco website, set your club location, and see what's available for Same-Day Delivery. That could give you an idea of what's available in the store before you head there, and others say that the same thing works for Instacart. While you might not see an ultra-rare bottle of bourbon popping up there, you might see things like new wines, liquors, and craft beers that have just been stocked, which can absolutely help you plan your shopping trip.

Shopping at Costco is as straightforward or as complicated as you'd like to make it, and if you really want to get the best possible deals, you'll need to learn all about deciphering the codes on Costco's price tags. It makes sense to question whether or not some of the not-so-secret codes also apply to alcohol as well, and there's good news: They do. When one Redditor found cases of Jameson priced at $39.93, they reached out to Reddit sleuths to find out why it had such a weird price, and another confirmed that the "93" meant that Costco had gotten that particular lot of whiskey at a lower-than-normal price, was passing savings on to the customer, and that it wasn't going to stay that price forever. 

Other codes work, too. One Redditor who clarified that they were in the liquor industry said that Costco makes it a point to beat competitors on pricing by at least 10 cents — which is signified by a price ending in "89." That's great stuff to look out for, but it's not all good news. 

If you see a price tag with an asterisk on it, what you see on the store floor is all that they're going to be getting. This particular item isn't going to be restocked, so if you see a great deal on liquor and you're considering stocking up to finish off your holiday shopping, do it while you can because it's not coming back.

Costco sells plenty of Kirkland Signature house-brand liquors, and there's something interesting going on here. According to a representative of a major spirits company who spoke to Punch on the condition of anonymity, Costco designs Kirkland liquor labels to look like other brand's labels, and even if it stocks those major brands, it sells the house brand cheaper: "It's called undercutting their own undercutting," the rep said. Costco has never released much information on just who makes Kirkland brand products, but that hasn't kept customers from speculating on what manufacturers are behind Costco's liquors.

There are some companies that are pretty good guesses: Crown Royal, Jim Beam, George Dickel, and Alexander Murray & Co. are all companies that have been associated with Kirkland products. Getting any more information from any of those companies — or Costco — has been a dead end for countless people, leading to a lot of "possibly" and "maybe" types of guesses.

That said, Kirkland Signature liquors get fairly constant praise for being legit competitors not only when it comes to price, but taste and quality, too. Kirkland's vodka is the real deal that's come out on top in countless taste tests. Just because it's a house brand, that doesn't mean you should reach right past it.

Let's keep talking about Kirkland Signature's vodka for a minute, because this is the subject of one of the most oft-repeated claims that people make when they say they've got the inside scoop on something. You've probably heard the rumor that Costco is selling Grey Goose vodka under its own label, but let's debunk that right now: It isn't. However, even though Grey Goose has issued a formal statement saying that no, it's not the one making Kirkland's vodka, the story persists.

That's possibly because Kirkland vodka is so well-reviewed and so popular, that consumers assume it has to be Grey Goose. But it's no mystery who really makes Costco's vodka, because it's labeled as a product of France's Gayant Distillery.

There are still some secrets — like the source of the wheat that's used in Costco's particular vodka — but what we do know that there are some major differences between Kirkland vodka and something like Grey Goose. Because Kirkland vodka is distilled five times, it's incredibly smooth. The idea is that it removes impurities and flavor, while Grey Goose only runs its vodka through one distillation to preserve qualities from the wheat. Neither is better than the other, per se, but the important takeaway here is that they are not the same.

Costco might be notoriously secretive about the source of a lot of its Kirkland Signature brands, but when it comes to liquor, there's one type that you can trace back to the source. Every bottle of tequila is required to be labeled with a NOM, or the Norma Oficial Mexicana. That number is linked to a specific distillery, and you can find that distillery simply by putting the number into Google or a NOM lookup site. And yes, it's even found on Kirkland Signature bottles of tequila. 

You might be asking yourself what the point is of going through all that trouble, and while the NOM might not give you a specific brand that's associated with that tequila, it can still tell you some important things — like whether or not the distillery that made it is known for using certain types of additives. 

Researching a particular distillery might also give you an idea of what to expect from that bottle of tequila ... although your mileage can vary. It likely won't give you insight into specifics, but some distilleries are known for things like specific processes, ingredients, or signature characteristics — such as those that are imparted during a specific aging process — that all the different tequilas might have in common. Bottom line? It could be a great way for you to predict whether or not you're going to like a certain bottle.

If you're having a party or plan on stocking up for the holidays, you might wonder if you can return liquor that doesn't get used. The answer to that is incredibly complicated, as it varies by the laws in your state. The only way to get a 100% correct answer regarding your location and circumstances is to call your Costco location, but there are some interesting things that we can share with you.

For starters, don't make a habit of it. Costco has been known to revoke memberships in cases where it seems as though customers are abusing the returns policy, although that's admittedly rare. Now, though, you can say you've been warned. In most cases, you don't need a receipt because they can check your membership for your purchase history ... although, if you purchased liquor without a membership, this might change.

That said, Costco has been known to issue mass refunds when a product doesn't meet standards. In 2023, Costco issued refunds to customers who purchased bottles from a particular batch of vodka after getting a series of complaints about bad flavors and smells. It wasn't an official recall, but customers were so vocal about their dissatisfaction that the company did it anyway. It's worth noting that if you think there's something off about the liquor you purchased, it never hurts to do a little digging.