Costco now sells four bourbons under the Kirkland Signature label, and between them they took four of the top five places in our survey of 2,724 readers. Three come from Barton 1792 in Bardstown, Kentucky, and the fourth arrived in warehouses in May 2026 without naming its distillery at all.
Prices range from about $25 to $40, and the proof runs from 92 to 120. The gap between the bottom of this list and the top is not a gap in quality so much as a gap in strength, and it changes what each bottle is good for.
Here is how our readers ranked them, from worst to best, and what each one is actually good for.
4. Kirkland Signature Small Batch Bourbon, $30 (1L)
The Small Batch is the entry point to the Barton range and the softest whiskey in it, and at 92 proof it is easy company.
Our readers recognized it more readily than almost anything else in the Kirkland range, naming it on 1,134 ballots, or 41.6 percent. They then placed it third more often than any other bourbon, with 506 third-place votes against 250 firsts. It is the bottle nearly everyone owns and hardly anyone defends.
Buy it for large batches of cocktails where the sweetness helps and the price per serving counts. For drinking on its own, the Bottled-in-Bond costs less and gives you considerably more.
3. Kirkland Signature Kentucky Straight Bourbon, $27 (1.75L)
The newest bourbon in the range is also the most mysterious one. The label states the whiskey was distilled, barreled and aged in Bardstown, then bottled by DC Flynt MW Domaines & Estates in Columbia, Tennessee. Bardstown makes Barton 1792 a plausible candidate, and several whiskey databases have already made the attribution. Costco names Barton openly on its other three bourbons and does not do so here, so the sourcing remains unconfirmed.
The whiskey is non-chill filtered at 92 proof, which is unusual at this price, and it carries no age statement, meaning it must be at least four years old under US labeling rules. Tastings.com awarded it 92 points and a gold medal in April 2026, finding caramelized cherry, vanilla nut brittle and toasted coconut before cinnamon pastry, chocolate orange and cedar on a long finish.
It finished fifth overall in our survey and third among the bourbons, on 1,957 points, having been on shelves for only a few months when voting opened. At a tracked average of $27.30 for 1.75 liters, it works out at roughly $11.70 per 750ml, which is less than half what the Small Batch costs by volume.
2. Kirkland Signature Bottled-in-Bond Bourbon, $25 (1L)
More readers named this their outright favorite than any other whiskey Costco sells, with 501 first-place votes. It still finished second overall, because fewer readers named it anywhere on their ballot.
The Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897 sets the terms it has to meet. One distillery, one distiller and one distilling season, followed by a minimum of four years in a federally supervised warehouse and bottling at exactly 100 proof. Barton 1792 distills it at DSP-KY-12 and puts its own name on the front of the bottle.
The extra strength over the Small Batch changes the whiskey completely. The nose is textbook Kentucky bourbon, with oak, vanilla, caramel and almond, and the palate holds brown sugar and vanilla cream against cinnamon red hots and rye spice. The finish carries baking spice, light leather and oak tannin for longer than the price would suggest.
This is the bottle to buy if you make Old Fashioneds at home. The proof keeps it standing up in the glass, and the legal guarantee means the bottle you buy next spring will taste like the one you have now.
1. Kirkland Signature Single Barrel Bourbon, $30 to $40 (1L)
More than half our readers named the Single Barrel somewhere in their top three, at 52.9 percent, and no other Kirkland whiskey came close to that reach. It collected 601 second-place votes, the highest count recorded in any position by any bottle in the survey.
The specification explains a good deal of the enthusiasm. Barton 1792 bottles it at 120 proof, non-chill filtered, from one barrel at a time, for around $30 to $40 a liter. Comparable whiskeys such as Wild Turkey Rare Breed or 1792 Full Proof cost $55 to $65 for a smaller bottle.
The whiskey opens on apple and dark cherry with a floral lift, then turns sharply on the palate into heavy oak, nuttiness and barrel char. At that strength it drinks dry and forceful, and a splash of water pulls the caramel and vanilla back into view. Each barrel differs from the last, so the bottle you buy in autumn will not be the bottle you bought in spring.
The variation is the reason it collected so many second places rather than firsts. Readers rate it highly and consistently without quite settling on it as a fixed favorite, which is the nature of single barrel whiskey.
Which Kirkland Bourbon Should You Buy?
For cocktails, buy the Bottled-in-Bond. For drinking neat, buy the Single Barrel and add water to open it up. For volume, the Kentucky Straight gives you 1.75 liters of 92-proof, non-chill filtered bourbon for the price of a liter of anything else on this list.
Between them the top two cost around $60, which is less than a single bottle of most name-brand bourbons at either specification.
Read the full article at Every Kirkland Bourbon Ranked, From Worst to Best
