Christmas Came Early For Bourbon Fans: Pappy 23 Spotted At Costco
Bourbon collectors are like vintage Pyrex collectors: They have no problem spending their time searching far and wide for rare, coveted bottles of whiskey. And every once in a while, man oh man do they strike (liquid) gold. This week, a Costco shopper in Napa, California, was lucky enough to grab a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle 23 – an extremely rare, limited-edition spirit aged for over two decades at Buffalo Trace Distillery in Kentucky — just as it was being put on the store shelf.
The shopper posted about his early Christmas miracle in the r/Costco_alcohol subreddit, noting that the location had three other bottles of it in stock when he was at the store with his wife, and he was lucky enough to grab the fourth, and the last. At $416.99, saying this bottle is a steal is an understatement. The current asking price from Fine Liquors is $3,608.99, while Broadway Wine N Liquor has it listed at a cool $3,499.99. The price can get even higher, with a bottle once selling at a Sotheby's auction for $52,500.
In another post on the r/Costco_alcohol subreddit, a user noted that a more substantial Pappy Van Winkle 23 drop would be happening at other Costco locations in the Bay Area, as well as in Reno and Sparks, Nevada, in the coming days. According to Whisky Shop, only 84,000 bottles of Pappy Van Winkle 23 are released every year, breaking down to less than 10,000 bottles for each state in the U.S. Meanwhile, Jim Beam makes 84 million bottles of Jim Beam every year. Safe to say, Pappy 23 isn't just a Christmas miracle. It's bordering on the surreal.
This isn't the first time Costco has put a rare bottle of Pappy on its shelves
Putting a bottle of extremely rare bourbon on sale at close to a 90% discount may seem like a price tag error, or someone at Costco having a bit of fun on their last day of work, but this isn't the first time Costco has sold Pappy Van Winkle for a bargain. In 2023, a Reddit user posted about finding a bottle of 10 Year Old Rip Van Winkle for $64.99 at a Costco in Bellingham, Washington — a bourbon that's typically around $900 a bottle. And in 2020, a Facebook user posted about finding a bottle of the Pappy Van Winkle Family Reserve 23 Year for $289.99 in Everett, Massachusetts.
In fact, Costco is known to sell quite a few rare bourbons. If you're hoping to get lucky by finding a bottle of Pappy 23 for yourself, don't be discouraged that you haven't gotten to post about it yet. While Buffalo Trace only releases Pappy once a year, the bottles tend to crop up on store shelves between October and December. That means as soon as you're done reading this, you've got to get up and get to your closest Costco, because the time is now. Who knows? You may just get lucky this year.