Where Does Costco Source Its Kirkland Blended Scotch Whisky?

Costco has fantastic prices on a wide variety of products, ranging from bulk deals on groceries to a wide selection of booze. One of its more popular spirits, the Kirkland Blended Scotch Whisky, comes from its own store brand of Kirkland Signature. You can tell a lot about a whisky just from looking at it, but the source isn't one of those things. In this case, it's certainly not Costco, which doesn't distill any liquor.

So, if Costco doesn't source its own whisky, where does the spirit come from? The company that actually sources Kirkland whisky, known as Alexander Murray & Company, is based in California. Alexander Murray & Co. is an independent bottler that imports whisky from Scotland (which is why it's labelled whisky and not whiskey, by the way). It differs from many bottlers by focusing on selling large quantities to retail stores. Murray & Co. also provides whisky to other retailers like Trader Joe's and Total Wine & More.

Alexander Murray has supplied whisky to Costco's Kirkland Signature label since 2007, after the founder, Steve Lipp, was approached by Costco due to Alexander Murray's success with Trader Joe's. Today, the distributor supplies Costco with over 100,000 cases of both single malt and blended Scotch whisky per year, though it does not disclose its exact annual sales.

But the buck doesn't stop there. Alexander Murray & Company might source the whisky it sells on to Costco, but it's not a distillery. Instead, it's a bottler that doesn't make the whisky itself. That means it comes from yet another distillery, which is where things get murky. Alexander Murray & Company gets its whisky from at least 12 different distilleries, and out of respect for both sides, it doesn't disclose which one produces the whisky that goes into Costco's bottles.

At the moment, the leading rumor is that the Kirkland Signature whisky comes from the Tullibardine distillery, but it has not been confirmed. Other possible contenders include spirits from the Macallan and Diageo distilleries, both of which have done business with Alexander Murray & Company in the past. Since Alexander Murray is an independent bottler, it sources many different types of whisky from many distilleries; this means the Kirkland stuff could be any brand the distributor has been confirmed to work with ... or even one that's not on the record.

In the opinion of expert bartender Stuart Jensen, "This [Kirkland Signature Blended Scotch Whisky] is reminiscent of a Dewar's White Label" (via Thrillist). Again, the distilleries Alexander Murray sources its whisky from are not always made public, but it's entirely possible that Dewar's, or at the very least its parent company of Bacardi, is among them.