I just tossed almost fifty bucks down the toilet. It’s my fault, I should have known better, but as they say, a sucker is born every minute. Today that sucker was me.

I ventured into Costco to buy big chunks of food to prepare for some events where a lot of very hungry people would be “consuming mass quantities” and, while on my way to the food department, passed the wines. I could not resist taking a spin to see what was what. There it was, their private label French Champagne, under the elegant Kirkland label, going for only $22 a bottle. I mean, how bad could it be? It was real French Brut Champagne and had been selected by a real M.W. named D.C. Flynt. I guess being an M.W. is not what it used to be.

How bad could it be? The answer is pretty bad. First of all there was the ugly brown color, followed by the the insipid taste and oxidized aromas. On top of that, it didn’t even have many bubbles left. In my opinion, this is one of the worst rip-offs I have ever tasted and don’t understand how any reputable merchant can sell such a wine. You would be better off with a bottle of $6 Spanish Cava than this terrible wine. No, that’s not a glass of Fino Sherry pictured here, it’s a glass of Kirkland Champagne about to be poured down the drain.

Perhaps this was a decent wine when our M.W., D.C. Flynt selected it, but somewhere along the way I think this wine has been so abused by bad storage and bad shipping conditions that it’s certainly not worth $22 a bottle or, for that matter, $2 a bottle.

I was a sucker because I let myself be conned into buying a wine from Costco. If you buy wine from a store where not a soul in the store has a clue about the wines their selling you get what you deserve. I got two bottles of undrinkable Champagne and I deserved it. Costco tosses in some famous names to make themselves look like a serious wine merchant and a lot of people get taken in by this ploy. For example they were selling wines like 2004 Ducru Beaucaillou today, but you have to ask yourself how those stacked up bottles were treated before you lay them down for a decade only to find out that, like me, you were a sucker too.

I can’t think of a worse place to buy wine than Costco.