Costco sells two heavyweight bourbons distilled by Barton 1792, and our 2,724 of our readers rated both of them above everything else on the warehouse shelf. The voting split the pair apart in a very interesting way. The 120-proof Single Barrel took the most points overall, while the $25 Bottled-in-Bond drew the most outright first-place votes of any whiskey in the range.
What separates them is not quality but how each one is made, and the difference decides which of the two you should be reaching for.
Kirkland Signature Bottled-in-Bond Bourbon: The Reader Favorite
The Bottled-in-Bond designation is the oldest consumer guarantee in American spirits, written into federal law in 1897 to stop retailers passing off adulterated whiskey. To carry it, a bourbon must come from one distillery, distilled by one distiller in a single season, aged at least four years in a federally supervised warehouse and bottled at exactly 100 proof. Barton 1792 in Bardstown, Kentucky, puts its own name on the label alongside the Kirkland one, which is unusual for a private-label product.
A liter costs around $25, working out at roughly $18.75 per 750ml equivalent. The nose is straightforward Kentucky bourbon, with oak, vanilla, caramel and almond. On the palate, brown sugar, honey and vanilla cream run against a spine of cinnamon red hots and rye spice, and the finish carries baking spice, light leather and oak tannin.
Readers gave it 501 first-place votes, or 18.4 percent of the survey, more than any other bottle in the Kirkland range. Nothing else came close on outright first preferences.
Kirkland Signature Single Barrel Bourbon: The Overall Winner
The Single Barrel takes a different approach entirely. Rather than blending barrels to a consistent house profile, one barrel is selected and bottled on its own, which means each release carries whatever the rickhouse gave it. It arrives at 120 proof and non-chill filtered, so the fatty acids and oils usually stripped out in production stay in the bottle and give it noticeably more texture.
A liter runs $30 to $40. Comparable specifications from a named distillery, such as Wild Turkey Rare Breed or 1792 Full Proof, generally cost $55 to $65 for a smaller bottle.
The nose opens on apple and dark cherry with a floral lift, and the palate then turns hard in the other direction into heavy oak, nuttiness and barrel char. At 120 proof it drinks dry and forceful, and a splash of water pulls the caramel and vanilla back out.
It finished on 2,865 points with 412 first-place votes, 601 seconds and 427 thirds. More than half of all readers named it somewhere in their top three, at 52.9 percent, and no other bottle in the range managed that.
Why the Single Barrel Won on Points
The ranking uses a Borda count, awarding three points for a first-place vote, two for a second and one for a third. The Bottled-in-Bond led on first places by 89 votes and still finished 387 points behind, because the Single Barrel appeared on 303 more ballots in total.
The shape of the vote says something useful about each bottle. Those 601 second-place votes are the highest count any Kirkland whiskey recorded in any position, which makes the Single Barrel the bottle readers reliably rate without quite calling it their favorite. The Bottled-in-Bond has a narrower and more committed following.
Single barrel variation explains a good deal of this. No two bottles are identical, and a whiskey that changes from release to release is harder to name as an outright favorite than one guaranteed by law to arrive the same way every time.
Which Kirkland Bourbon Should You Buy?
Buy the Bottled-in-Bond if you want consistency above everything else. It is the better cocktail bourbon, with enough proof to hold its shape in an Old Fashioned or a Manhattan, and the legal standard means the bottle you buy next spring will taste like the one you have now.
Buy the Single Barrel if you drink bourbon neat. The 120 proof and the non-chill filtration give it a weight and oiliness the Bottled-in-Bond does not have, and the trade-off is that the next bottle will be a little different from this one.
There is also a third answer, which is that the two together cost around $60. That is less than a single bottle of most name-brand bourbons at either specification, and it settles the question in the only way that really works.
Read the full article at What Is the Best Bourbon at Costco? We Asked 2,700 Whiskey Drinkers To Find Out.
