Costco sells a 12-year-old blended Scotch in a 1.75 liter jug for $40, alongside two single malts, one of which is widely believed to come from Caol Ila. When we asked 2,724 readers to rank the full Kirkland Signature range, the blend finished third overall and both malts landed in the bottom three. The margin came to roughly 800 points either way.
The malts are older, stronger and, on paper, the more serious whiskies. Readers preferred the blend anyway, and the reasons have less to do with what is in the glass than with how Scotch is bought and drunk.
The result would surprise nobody who follows the awards circuit, where blends have been quietly taking the value categories for years.
Why Costco’s 12-Year-Old Blended Scotch Beat Its Single Malts
The blend took 2,107 points against 1,313 for the Islay single malt and 1,255 for the Speyside and Highland releases. The more telling number is its 486 first-place votes, only 15 fewer than the bottle that led the entire survey on outright firsts, from a whisky named on just 34 percent of ballots. A third of our readers put it in their top three, and more than half of those made it their favorite.
The bottle earns the support it has. It carries a genuine 12-year age statement, comes from the independent bottler Alexander Murray & Co., and costs $40 for 1.75 liters. The nose is classic Speyside in style, floral and honeyed, and the palate runs to caramel and baking spice with a faint wisp of smoke on the finish. It is thin next to a good malt and will not reward slow attention in a Glencairn, but in a highball it does the work of Dewar’s at half the money.
A second explanation belongs alongside the first one. Both Kirkland single malts are rotational releases. Alexander Murray sources the casks, the bottles land in warehouses, they sell through, and they do not return for months. A large share of the readers voting have never had the chance to buy one. The Speyside releases also run to $90, which puts them in competition with named distilleries instead of the rest of the Kirkland range.
The survey therefore does not prove that blends beat malts. It proves that a good blend, priced sensibly and stocked every week of the year, will out-vote a better malt most people cannot find.
What the Awards Circuit Says About Blended Scotch
The competition results point in the same direction. Blended Scotch has taken gold and double gold medals at the major spirits competitions across the past two years, at price points single malt cannot approach and often at a third of the cost of an age-stated malt from a comparable region.
The three bottles below all carry a 12-year age statement, and all three cost less than Costco’s Speyside single malt.
Dewar’s 12 Year Old, Around $50
Dewar’s took a gold medal at the International Spirits Challenge in 2026 and was named best blended Scotch in the 12-year-old category at the International Whisky Competition in 2024, scoring 89.06 points. The blend draws on Aberfeldy, Craigellachie, Aultmore, Royal Brackla and Glen Deveron, and is double aged, which means the malt and grain whiskies are married together in oak after blending. It runs at 40 percent, with fresh vanilla, clean oak and a touch of spice.
It is also the bottle Alexander Murray reportedly had in mind when building the Kirkland blend, which makes it the obvious next step for anyone who likes what Costco is selling.
Imperial 12 Year Old, From $18.99
Imperial took first place in the 12-year-old blended Scotch category at the International Whisky Competition in 2025 with 88.45 points, and a double gold at the New York World Spirits Competition in the same year. Sazerac owns the brand and Chivas Brothers produces it, and it carries real status in South Korea while remaining almost unknown in Western retail, which is a large part of why it costs what it does.
The nose is floral, with white flowers and ripe pear, and the palate opens on espresso and dark chocolate before turning to pear sweetness and warm baking spice. At 40 percent and under $20, it is the cheapest whisky in this article.
MacNair’s Lum Reek 12 Year Old, Around $79
MacNair’s took a double gold at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition in 2026. This one is a blended malt rather than a blended Scotch, which means it contains single malts only, with no column-distilled grain whisky in it at all.
Billy Walker, the blender behind GlenAllachie, built it from GlenAllachie malts and heavily peated whisky sourced across Scotland, then aged it in a mix of ex-bourbon, Pedro Ximénez sherry and red wine casks. It arrives at 46 percent and non-chill filtered, with mocha, heather honey, dark raisin and sweet peat smoke. Anyone left wanting smoke after the Islay result, without waiting on a Costco allocation, should start here.
The Takeaway
A 40 percent blend at $40 and a 46 percent blended malt at $79 are doing different jobs, and neither is a lesser version of single malt.
What our survey caught is readers voting for the bottle they will actually finish, which is a fair standard for judging whisky and one the review circuit tends to overlook.
Read the full article at Is Costco’s Blended Scotch Better Than Single Malt? 2,700 Drinkers Just Made the Case
