What's The Company Behind Costco Kirkland Boxed Wine?

When you're trying to ascertain just exactly what company produces any given Costco Kirkland Signature product, you can try to compare ingredients with other brands to figure it out. Sometimes, it's simple and printed right on the label, like the company that makes Kirkland Hard Seltzer. Unfortunately, occasionally brands are outed after a health safety outbreak, as happened when Handsome Brook Farms recalled about 11,000 Kirkland Signature Organic Eggs. However, some items take some serious investigating, which is the case with Kirkland boxed wines. It does appear that the company behind Kirkland boxed wines is Gallo (formerly EJ Gallo).

The sleuths at Moneywise dug into the situation and discovered from an Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau registry that the massive wine syndicate Gallo is linked to Kirkland Signature's California wines, but that may not mean that they're the actual producer. They could be working merely as a distributor or intermediary, but Gallo is certainly involved somewhere along the supply chain. 

According to the Wine International Association, Gallo was the world's largest wine company, creating an incredible 3% of the world's total wine supply in 2024. It works with over 3,000 suppliers and has 75 subsidiaries. Gallo is the name behind brands like Barefoot Wine and Turning Leaf. With such a huge production base and so many interconnected businesses, it's likely that Gallo is, in fact, also the name behind Kirkland Signature boxed wines.

Costco's Kirkland Signature California boxed wines come in 3-liter containers, offering a red Cabernet Sauvignon and a white Pinot Grigio. When you're a little shy about pulling up to the gathering with boxed wine, you can also get each by the 1.5-liter bottle. And, if you don't have a Costco membership, it appears that Gallo is also the company responsible for Aldi's Winking Owl wine.

When you're providing wine for the whole party, or going away for the weekend and plan on drinking more than just a bottle, boxed wine is significantly easier to travel with than bottled wines. Plus, although it's difficult to prove, the boxed wine appears to be the same product as the bottled stuff, and at $16.69 for a box of the Pinot Grigio, that comes down to $5.56 per liter or just $4.17 for a regular-sized, 750mL bottle's worth.

Sure, we may not have an undeniably definitive answer to who makes Kirkland Signature California boxed wines, but they're getting some pretty decent reviews. On r/Costco, one user commented, "I've only had the cab but it's solid especially for the price." And Jon Thorsen of the website Reverse Wine Snob (that reviews inexpensively priced wines) had positive things to say about both varieties, calling the Pinot Grigio, "A refreshing take on Pinot Grigio," while the Cabernet was, "[L]egit good stuff and an insane value." So, whether you choose to consider it as Gallo or just another indistinct Kirkland product, it may be time to do your own taste-testing investigation of the boxed California wines at Costco.