A Rare Bourbon Has Been Spotted At Costco With A Reasonable Price Tag

Some people go to Costco for cheap toilet paper and famously cheap $1.50 hot dogs from its food court. A lot of home mixologists, however, flock to the popular warehouse retailer for its selection of booze. Not only is Costco's alcohol reasonably priced (and, in some states, you can buy it without a membership!), but, from time to time, a careful scan of the shelves yields some rare and interesting finds. Who can forget the time period where you could buy a whole barrel of Jack Daniel's at Costco, for instance?

A lucky roll of the Costco dice recently took place for one Reddit bourbon lover, who posted a picture of a bottle of exclusive 2024 King of Kentucky just perched on the shelf like it was no big deal. Commenters went crazy. Not only is King of Kentucky hard to find in the wild, owing to limited production runs and distribution, but it is very expensive. The Costco price tag of $259.99 spotted by the Redditor was a significant deal compared to the standard $350 MSRP for a 750mL bottle. Basically, this was the whiskey-related equivalent of finding an original Renaissance Dürer drawing in a garage sale picture frame (yes, that really happened).

Don't go running out the door to your local Costco, just yet, however. Other commenters on the Reddit thread agreed that this was a singular find. Their own searches did not turn up similar bounties, though who knows what may pop up at your local Costco?

Bourbon doesn't necessarily need to originate in Kentucky, but it's widely agreed that the best stuff is distilled in the Bluegrass State. Of Kentucky bourbons, King of Kentucky certainly ranks in the upper echelon. It's an old name in the industry that was resurrected in the last 10 years by the Brown-Forman company. Tasting it yields notes of "dark chocolate, old oak, sweet coconut, malt and rich vanilla over wood spice," according to Brown-Forman master distiller Chris Morris (via the Lexington Herald-Leader). Not only is the bourbon ultra-premium, but its quantities are seriously limited. In 2024, only 5,100 bottles of the bourbon were made available in a handful of U.S. states. Back in 2007, Morris hand-selected the lots of barrels that would age into that 2024 bourbon. Each bottle has a wax seal and an individually-numbered label imprinted with a serial number and lot number.

So, it's understandable that the bourbon denizens at Reddit freaked out when they saw the photo of King of Kentucky sitting on the Costco shelf. "You better have bought it," swore one commenter. "I think my brain paused for 3 seconds," another gasped. A peek at the OP's posting history solved the mystery: they did buy it. They even hooked up a coworker with the same deal. Perhaps the only thing better than a once-in-a-lifetime Costco find is a happy ending just like that one.