The Bougie, Rare Wine That's Been Sold At Costco (Only A Few Hundred Cases Are Made Per Year)
Red wine can potentially cause nasty, screaming headaches for some unlucky folks, but Screaming Eagle cabernet sauvignon might be a vintage worth the pain. Don't get too excited, though, because you'll pay handsomely for the privilege ... if you get a chance to buy it in the first place. But head to your favorite warehouse retailer, and you might just get lucky. At Costco, home of the $1.50 hot dog meal, some folks have beheld a rare sighting of the vaunted wine, which has sold for almost $8,600 for three bottles. In both 2024 and the year before that, California warehouse members took to social media, stunned by sightings of the cab, which is so limited in production and high in demand that finding it out in public could be compared to being struck by lightning.
Screaming Eagle wines are a cult favorite among oenophiles, being the product of a small-batch winery in Napa Valley. Only 500 cases or so are produced every year, and the lion's share of those bottles are offered to the lucky few on the brand's mailing list — some folks wait as long as 12 years to score just such a spot. Screaming Eagle's head winemaker, Nick Gislason, is something of a wunderkind, having ascended to his position before the age of 40. Suffice it to say, Screaming Eagle is not a wine that you'll be using to make Octavia Spencer's three-ingredient cocktail concoction of red wine and cola. Even at Costco, known for being a discount retailer, a single bottle of Screaming Eagle has been spotted fetching $3,699.99. Reportedly, many of the few Cali locations that carried it had only a single bottle in stock.
You can pay thousands for Screaming Eagle wine, but should you?
What makes Screaming Eagle so special? The wine is considered exceptionally high-quality, earning near-perfect or perfect scores on taste, while the making of the bottles is shrouded in secrecy. Though some wineries open their doors to the public, Screaming Eagle does not. Its prices are high, access to its bottles is on lockdown, and even its website is a basic, enigmatic portal offering precious little concrete information. Which begs the question ... is the actual wine worth all the cloak-and-dagger hype? If you ask certain detractors on Reddit, the answer is up in the air.
"As a sommelier, I can tell you that it is highly overrated and not worth the money," one Redditor claimed. "I'll take 'products for people with more money than sense' for $200 Alex!," another snarked. On the same thread, shots were taken about the provenance of Screaming Eagle's very grapes: "Long running joke [is] that you go to Sonoma for wine. Go to Napa for auto parts."
It's interesting to note that Screaming Eagle itself has disavowed having sold any wine to Costco. This statement gave rise to speculation that Costco bought the bottles at a wine auction, contributing to an inflated price (even for Screaming Eagle) and potential embarrassment for the snooty winery. Will you be taking advantage of a rare opportunity to try a famous wine for yourself and report back after a taste test? If so, you'd better have deep pockets!