Kirkland Signature Chateauneuf du Pape – Costco QPR Champs!

Kicking off our series on the best wines at Costco with the Kirkland Signature Chateauneuf-du-Pape!

A Southern Rhone blend of Grenache, Syrah, Cinsault, Vaccarese, Counoise and Mourvedre from Rhone, France.

The Kirkland Signature Chateauneuf-du-Pape is available for $19.99 exclusively at Costco. Imported by DC Flynt MW Domaines and Estates.

From the bottle:

This Kirkland Signature Signature Series Chateauneuf-du-Pape is produced at one of the oldest and best-known Domaines in the Southern Rhone. The deep purple robe leads to sweet violet and fresh fruit notes of black fruit, blackberry and cassis balanced by hints of cedar and spice.

14.5% Alcohol

Fresh off the heels of our multi-week series on the best wines at Trader Joe’s, today we start a similar series highlighting our favorite picks at Costco! QPR, or quality to price ratio, is a term used to represent the overall value of a bottle. This is exactly what our unique rating system puts into numerical terms. If quality is high and the price is low, then you’ve got a winner. And in this series, we’ll be highlighting the best of the best.

Much like our Trader Joe’s series, many of these wines will be the exclusive bottlings (the Kirkland Signature series) simply because by removing the middle-man Costco has found they can drive prices down and offer more value; however, we’ll be throwing in some other extreme value bottles as well. (You can find more about the Costco pricing model here.)

As always, selection at each Costco varies so you may not be able to find all of these wines but hopefully by the time we’re done in a couple weeks everyone will be able to find at least a few of them. Also note that many of these bottles tend to sell FAST, so if you happen to see them at your local store don’t hesitate!

The 2015 Kirkland Signature Chateauneuf-du-Pape (2014 pictured) from Domaine de Nalys offers a rare treat to drink a wine from the renowned Chateauneuf-du-Pape region for less than $20. It begins with an excellent aroma full of red and black currant, red cherry, licorice, nicely integrated spice and some nice floral and herb notes. Tasting the smooth, medium-bodied wine shows that it has good complexity. After a couple hour decant blackberry, black cherry, leather, licorice and spice all combine seamlessly in your mouth. A nice earthy streak mid-palate leads into the dry, spicy finish. It may be $19.99 but it’s truly a bargain for Chateauneuf-du-Pape! That said this isn’t a bottle I would recommend aging for years in your cellar, but it is pretty darn tasty right now.

As always you can find an updated list of all our recommended wines from Costco as well as more tips and tricks for shopping the store here.