ILLUSTRATION: SARAH KLINGER
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Real value or worthless plonk? Wine columnist Lettie Teague filled her shopping cart with bottles at Costco, Sam’s Club and Trader Joe’s to determine whether their private-label wines deliver
“LET’S GO FOR a wine walk,” said Darel, a member order specialist at Sam’s Club in Secaucus, N.J., when I asked for his help in finding the Sam’s Club private-label wines. His assistance would include no wine advice, Darel warned, “unless you want me to make stuff up.” Darel was a Scotch-drinking man.
You’ll find no dedicated wine salespeople in the 651 Sam’s Clubs across the country, though 500 of them carry the Member’s Mark private-label wines. In Secaucus, the 2016 Member’s Mark Mosel Riesling loomed large over the other wine offerings in giant blue bottles a foot and a half tall, but they seemed proportionate to the store’s towering rolls of toilet paper and crates of potato chips. These bottles were also a great talisman of sorts for my recent quest: to find the best private-label wines at three of the country’s biggest chain stores.
My list included Sam’s Club, Costco and Trader Joe’s. The only store where I needed a membership was Costco. You don’t need to belong to Sam’s Club to buy wine there, and Trader Joe’s isn’t a club—though with 467 stores in 41 states, it’s selling on a similar scale. I bought at least half a dozen private-label wines in each store at prices ranging from $3 to $20 a bottle; most cost under $10. The wines were produced in a variety of places including New Zealand, California, Italy, France and Germany—and were various in quality, too.
The teams behind the Sam’s Club and Costco wines were mostly forthcoming with details about pricing and production; Trader Joe’s national director of public relations, Alison Mochizuki, declined to talk. “We don’t discuss what goes into the decision-making process,” she wrote in an email. Nor would she give me information about the one Trader Joe’s wine I liked: the 2015 Trader Joe’s Platinum Reserve Carneros Pinot Noir ($14), light-bodied and attractive.
As it happened, the other seven wines I bought at Trader Joe’s were some of the worst I’ve tasted in years. The two Charles Shaw —aka “Two Buck Chuck”—wines, a Cabernet and Sauvignon Blanc, were virtually undrinkable. Though not a private label, Charles Shaw is inextricably linked with the store. I bought the bottles on the recommendation of Trader Joe’s “crew member” Tom, who said they were the best of the Two Buck Chucks. He also pointed me toward the 2014 Trader Joe’s Coastal Syrah, the 2014 Trader Joe’s Coastal Merlot and the Trader Joe’s Blanc de Blancs French sparkling wine, which was bitter and thin, cruel to the tongue.
The wines from Sam’s Club and especially Costco were better; some, quite good. Sam’s Club released its first Member’s Mark wine in October 2015 and expanded its range significantly a year later. I spoke with the company’s Bentonville, Ark.-based wine director, Olivier Kielwasser, about the wines, starting with that gigantic Riesling.
“We wanted it to be a conversation piece,” said Mr. Kielwasser. The group of friends I gathered to taste the wines were duly impressed. While the wine itself was pleasant if a bit sweet, the bottle size and color really stood out. “It screams ‘festive!’ ” my husband declared.
The other Sam’s Club wines were less exciting to look at and to drink. The Cabernet Sauvignon and the red blend were both rather soft and sweet, as was the Beviamo Moscato, while the New Zealand Sauvignon was aggressively herbal.
Mr. Kielwasser directs buying and selection and oversees a tasting panel composed of knowledgeable wine drinkers and “more casual wine drinkers.” He has big expansion plans for the Member’s Mark label, which currently includes eight wines. Several new wines are already available or soon to debut, including an Italian Prosecco, and a Napa Cabernet Sauvignon that will be sent to the top 125 stores later this year. Over the next few years “we could have an Albarino, a Rioja,” Mr. Kielwasser mused, and even put forward the possibility of adding Champagne and Bordeaux. “In the next three years we could have 25 wines. That will enable us to cover every major wine region.”
The Costco team has a dozen years on their Sam’s Club peers, having produced the first Kirkland private-label wine in 2003. Seventeen Kirkland wines are currently “in rotation,” said Costco assistant vice-president Annette Alvarez-Peters, in an email from company headquarters in suburban Seattle.
Ms. Alvarez-Peters works with a team of buyers and winemakers all over the world, as well as Louisiana-based importer DC Flynt. Mr. Flynt helped craft the three Kirkland Signature wines that my friends and I particularly liked: the 2016 Kirkland Signature Ti Point Marlborough New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc ($7), the Kirkland Signature Brut Champagne ($20) and the 2015 Kirkland Signature Rutherford Napa Valley Meritage ($14), a Cabernet-dominant blend. All the wines were not only well made but also excellent deals. The Kirkland Signature Russian River Chardonnay and Sonoma Chardonnay were less impressive, dilute and over-oaked.
OENOFILE // BIG-VALUE BOTTLES FROM THE BIG-BOX STORES
- 1. 2016 Member’s Mark Mosel Riesling (magnum), ($10.50) This soft, relatively sweet and appealing Riesling made in Mosel, Germany, was launched in 2016. It’s only available twice a year in select Sam’s Club stores.
- 2. 2015 Trader Joe’s Platinum Reserve Carneros Pinot Noir, ($14) A light-bodied, attractive wine with pretty red-fruit aromas produced in limited quantities—1,430 cases according to the label—in the cool Carneros region of California.
- 3. 2016 Kirkland Signature Ti Point Sauvignon Blanc Marlborough New Zealand, ($7) Produced by Sacred Hill winery in Marlborough, N.Z. (whose own label wines sell for much more), this is classic Kiwi Sauvignon: bright and zingy with citrus aromas.
- 4. 2015 Kirkland Signature Rutherford Napa Valley Meritage, ($14) This soft, approachable (but not lacking in structure) blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Petite Verdot and Cabernet Franc is a remarkable value.
- 5. Kirkland Signature Brut Champagne (non-vintage), ($20) Produced by the Janisson Champagne house in Verzenay, France, this Pinot Noir-dominant Champagne is soft and fruity but not lacking in elegance. A truly crowd-pleasing style.
“Where can you get real Champagne for $20?” one friend asked while drinking the bright and pleasingly fruity (Pinot Noir-dominant) Kirkland Champagne. And at $7, the zingy Kirkland New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, all agreed, was “a steal.”
Razor-thin profit margins are the secret to Costco’s low pricing, said Mr. Flynt—“well under 15%,” or half that of a traditional wine retailer. The fact that Costco can make large commitments when purchasing fruit also helps, said winemaker Marco DiGiulio. As wine director of Sonoma-based Vintage Wine Estates, a company that owns several wineries, Mr. DiGiulio has provided wines to Costco for nearly a decade.
‘Razor-thin profit margins are the secret to Costco’s low pricing.’
Mr. DiGiulio and Glenn Hugo, winemaker at Girard Winery in Napa (a Vintage Wine Estates property), are credited as the talent behind the Rutherford Napa Meritage wine. It’s one of Costco’s smaller-production releases, at approximately 7,000 cases per year. Contrast that to some of Costco’s larger offerings, like the New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, at over 100,000 cases, and the Kirkland Champagne, at about 50,000 cases.
Mr. DiGiulio said the Costco wine team tasted at the winery “at least twice a year” and many times more at corporate headquarters. Mr. DiGiulio and Mr. Hugo credited Mr. Flynt as integral to the wines’ creation. Mr. Flynt demurred. “It’s very much a group effort,” he said, adding that they all agreed the Kirkland style was approachable and easy drinking.
Mr. Hugo makes Cabernets under the Girard label that cost $100 or more but said the production of the Costco wines wasn’t so very different, save for the fact that he often used more new oak in the latter. “My job on the very high end is not to mess it up,” he joked, adding that he found it “more challenging and maybe even more rewarding” to make a $14 wine that anyone can afford. Or, as he put it, “We all need a wine for Wednesday night.”
Email Lettie at wine@wsj.com.
