Costco Used To Sell Literal Barrels Of Jack Daniels For $9k
Imagine you're shopping at Costco. You're pushing a cart filled with bulk toilet paper and a delicious rotisserie chicken bag. You've just rounded the giant bins of Squishmallows when, what to your wondering eyes should appear, but a giant barrel of Jack Daniels for the mind-blowing price of $8,600. It sounds ludicrous, but it happened to at least one Redditor in 2017. Nor were they the only one — the comment section was packed with anecdotes of others having spotted the memeable barrels of Jack for varying prices. Details on the bulk whiskey are sparse, and mentions of the Jack Daniels barrels at Costco seem to have dried up a few years ago. Jack Daniels, an enduring Top 10 American whiskey in terms of sales, has been described by German whiskey database Whisky.com as having "a light and smooth body ... with sweet aromas from honey and vanilla, [and] notes of oak and chocolate."
It's usually sold at major liquor retailers in bottles of varying sizes, but seeing a whole barrel in the wild was a true rarity. (This was arguably more newsworthy than when Jack Daniels sued a dog toy company over a bottle-shaped chew toy, but it's hard to predict what will go viral.) Buying a cask of JD sounds like the punchline of a joke about the size of items available at warehouse stores. It's too bad the deal was not cost-effective despite being gone with the wind like so many Costco bargains.
The numbers don't add up to a bargain
According to the picture posted on Reddit, the Jack Daniels barrel makes 40 cases of whiskey. A case of Jack Daniels consists of 12 750-milliliter bottles. Even at an average price of $21.75 per bottle (derived from some of the lowest prices on the web), that's a total of $10,440 for 480 bottles. Sounds like a steal, right?
Think again. There have been years of economic inflation since 2017. In more current prices, the $8,600 whiskey barrel would cost $10,690.43. Did you hear that? It's the sound of your savings drying up. Not to mention that, while having a gigantic cask of Jack Daniels in your home has an undeniable cachet, it's a lot less convenient than pouring from bottles.
If you were a dedicated whiskey drinker or needed a lot of booze for a huge party, the barrel might have seemed tempting. There are options for getting great bargains, like utilizing Costco's online coupon book, but you should always run the numbers to determine if you have actually found a favorable price because bigger doesn't necessarily mean better.
Deals and novelties at Costco come and go
The fabled barrel of Jack isn't the only strange item to show up at Costco. The store has sold gold bars, teddy bears almost eight feet tall, caskets for funerals, and even a 72-pound wheel of Parmesan Reggiano, for those times when the cheese grater at Olive Garden just isn't enough. Granted, many of these items showed up online, but Costco isn't slouching in the "massive quantities of great stuff" department. Submitted for your approval: a 7-pound tub of Nutella and a vat containing 240 mac 'n cheese helpings.
However, several of the greatest hits at Costco have moved on to the big bargain basement in the sky. From the All-American Chocolate Cake, which was discontinued in 2020, to the Kirkland Signature turkey burgers, which have been phased out, some departed products have even inspired petitions to bring them back. And who can forget gone-but-not-forgotten favorites from the food court, like the hot turkey and provolone sandwich or the churro? It's a tragic fact that, in life, few good things last forever. That applies to lunchtime faves and immense casks of Tennessee whiskey alike.