6 Costco Kirkland Cheeses Worth Every Penny And 3 You Can Skip

No matter how big your kitchen and refrigerator are, when you shop at Costco, space is always a consideration. The store's bulk offerings come at a tremendous value, but that has to be weighed against how much room you have to store them, and how quickly you can make your way through them. That's especially true with perishable items like cheeses. It's all too easy to overbuy and end up with more than you can handle.

Costco's signature brand, Kirkland Signature, offers hefty portions of many different cheeses from around the world, but unless you've got a restaurant-sized walk-in, you won't have room to keep them all. That's where this guide comes in. In order to help you decide what deserves the valuable real estate in your fridge, I took on the task of tasting nine Kirkland Signature cheeses. Taking into account factors like flavor, value, and versatility, I decided which ones are too good to pass up, and which cheeses you should skip.

The best cheeses, like fine wines, showcase the unique terroir they come from. The diet that the dairy animals eat, the flora that's present in the atmosphere as the cheese is created and aged, and countless other factors go into forming a cheese's unique personality. 

Isigny Sainte-Mère is the French brand behind Kirkland's double cream Brie. The company is an award-winning dairy cooperative, and you can sense the verdant Normandy environment in its aromas and flavors. This impressive wheel of Brie weighs over a pound, making it perfect for serving a crowd, and at just over $10, it's an affordable luxury. It's best eaten at room temperature, which allows it to express more complexity. 

The rich, buttery texture and opulent creaminess are well balanced by bright salinity and subtle earthy flavors, like hints of button mushroom and hay. This Brie can be enjoyed right away, or closer to its sell-by date for a more intense flavor and meltingly soft texture. It's also excellent baked, which turns it into a warm, silky, gooey indulgence. 

Having spent several weeks in the Italian region of Campania, which is famous for its buffalo mozzarella, I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to this style of cheese. Kirkland Signature's fresh mozzarella is not made from buffalo milk like the Italian specialty, so it's not a one-to-one comparison. However, my memories of those spectacularly milky, perfectly seasoned, tenderly creamy cheeses hampered my ability to enjoy this one.

Kirkland's fresh mozzarella is lacking in several areas. It seems undersalted, making it taste rather flat and plain. There's a tang to it, which is expected with this style, but I found this vinegary zip to be unbalanced and off-putting. The cheese tastes somewhat thin and watery, even after I left a few slices out to drain completely. It was better melted, but still not great. I'm also not sure why they opted to pre-slice these logs — I would have preferred them whole, so I could cut them into different sizes. You get a lot of cheese for your buck here (over 2 pounds for less than $10) but I'd rather pay more for a better fresh mozzarella.

When I was growing up, I only knew cheddar cheese as bright orange, fairly mild, and smooth, like a more flavorful version of American cheese. It wasn't until adulthood that I discovered true cheddar in all its styles, textures, and colors, and learned to appreciate it as a specific and unique family of cheese. As a grad student, I was a temporary resident of Somerset County in England, the birthplace of cheddar cheese, which is named for the town it was created in. While there, I had some incredibly potent, vibrantly sharp cheddars that took my breath away. Kirkland Signature's coastal English cheddar reminds me of them.

Aged 15 months, this cheddar cheese is irresistibly sharp and developed. With every bite I discovered a new flavor, a new aroma, a new texture. The cheese melts in your mouth, but also has a crystalline firmness and little pockets of crunchy salinity. It evolves from fruity sweetness to a savory, meaty, bacon fat flavor, to a mineral-driven marine finish. I couldn't get enough of this stuff. I got a very sizable block of this incredible cheese for just over $12. I wouldn't blink an eye at paying even more for a cheddar of this quality. While it certainly has versatile uses, it needs nothing. I will probably eat this entire slab on its own.

Cheese made from sheep's milk is probably my favorite overall type. Give me a zippy pecorino or a pungent Roquefort any day. There's a little bit of a wooly funk to sheep's milk cheeses that I love as a fan of barnyard flavors and aromas, which I realize aren't everyone's cup of tea, but they really work for me. Historically, I've loved Manchego cheeses, which are arguably some of the best sheep's milk cheeses in the world, so I was surprised that Kirkland Signature's Manchego fell a bit flat for me.

At six months of age, Kirland's Manchego is right in the middle in terms of style; not quite young, not quite aged — what's known as curado, or cured. It slices easily and still retains the springy texture reminiscent of a youthful cheese. Yet, despite its age, it hasn't developed much in the way of complexity. While this cheese isn't bad, and is in fact pretty tasty, it's also the most expensive of all of these options. At nearly $14 per pound, it is much more affordable compared to similar Manchegos from other retailers, but it's just not exciting enough to plunk down that kind of cash. 

Kirkland Signature's organic feta cheese bursts out of its container with gusto. With one bite I felt invigorated, as if I'd taken a double shot of espresso or plunged myself into an icy bath. Packaged in salty brine that keeps feta fresh for longer, these slabs of 100% sheep's milk cheese remain vibrant until you're ready to use them, making this tub a great buy even if you don't plan on eating it all right away. That might be a hard ask, though, as this feta's flavor kept me diving back in for more.

In my experience, it's rare for a feta with this much salinity and acidity to be enjoyable on its own, but Kirkland's feta is gorgeously balanced. There's enough fat and creaminess to counter the intense tang and zip. These characteristics also make this cheese incredibly versatile, as it contrasts in a beautiful way with sweet flavors and enhances savory ingredients, too. A simple yet spectacular snack is a block of this feta with a drizzle of honey. It's also a great salad topper. Its intensity lets it hold up to other strong flavors like fresh herbs, briny olives, and pickled onions. At a reasonable price of about $18 for almost 2 pounds, this is one of the best grocery store fetas I've ever tried.

This was a tough one to label a skip. Kirkland Signature's Iberico cheese is tasty and right up my alley. Just because I don't especially recommend it, doesn't mean that I won't be buying and enjoying this cheese in the future. As one of the priciest cheeses on this list, however, I won't be buying it often, and I'll have to steel myself to fork over that kind of money.

It's a decent cheese: briny, oily, salty, and nutty. Made from a combination of cow, sheep, and goat milk, and aged for 10 months, I expected it to have a lot of complexity. Surprisingly, it seemed fairly one-dimensional. There's nothing that I can really pinpoint as a flaw in this cheese — it's just not as exciting as I wanted it to be for the price. If I'm going to spend nearly $20 on a hunk of cheese, I want it to blow me away, and this didn't come close.

One of, if not the most versatile cheese in this entire lineup, Kirkland Signature's gouda is a fantastic example of the style. While it doesn't have an age statement on its label, it's clearly a young cheese, boasting a fresh and mellow flavor along with a semi-soft, springy, and creamy texture. Young gouda can sometimes be on the boring side, but Kirkland's version, which is made in the Netherlands where this style originated, is anything but boring. For around $12 I picked up a 2-pound hunk of this red wax-coated cheese, and I'm certain that I'll use every bit of it.

Even cold just out of the fridge, the gouda had a pleasant mild aroma, and as it got closer to room temperature, it became more fragrant, with a nutty, buttery, and slightly sweet profile. The taste matched these aromas, without a hint of tang, sharpness, or funk, along with the perfect amount of salt to bring dimension to its mild flavors. Where this cheese really shines is its texture. It has firmness and elasticity, but once you take a bite, it practically turns to soft butter in your mouth. This gouda melts phenomenally well, too, and makes the best grilled cheese sandwich. 

An American invention, BellaVitano is a cow's milk-style cheese created by Sartori, a Wisconsin cheesemaking outfit. It's only been around since 2008, making it something of a newborn in the world of cheese styles. Sartori fashioned it as a sort of cheddar-parmesan hybrid with a texture similar to gouda. Its nutty, buttery, sweet flavor lends it well to all kinds of uses and pairings, and Sartori takes full advantage of this by coating the rind of this cheese with various flavorings, including this Kirkland Signature version that's rubbed with Cabernet Sauvignon wine.

The colorful purple rind is edible, imbuing its wine flavor strongest along the edges and more subtle as you get to the center of the cheese. The sweet nuttiness makes a wonderful contrast with the fruity, berry-like flavors that the wine brings, and all of the characteristics meld together beautifully on the palate. It's a touch crumbly, but maintains an overall soft and creamy texture with an incredibly smooth mouthfeel, and would make an elegant, classy addition to any cheese board. This Costco find that brings new meaning to a wine and cheese pairing is exclusive to the wholesaler. At only $7.99 per pound, it's an incredible value — at other retailers, BellaVitano cheeses can cost over twice as much.

Of all the Kirkland Signature cheeses, the goat cheese is the one I buy the most often. For one thing, the price is right — 21 ounces runs me just over $9. However, it's not just the affordability that makes this my go-to Costco cheese. The aromas, flavors, and textures of this fresh chèvre are all spot on, and it has seemingly infinite uses. Because it's so inexpensive, I don't hesitate to experiment with it in all kinds of recipes, and it's also delightful simply spread on crackers or toast.

The lovely airy yet still rich and creamy texture — along with the fresh goat milk tang — gives this cheese a light quality that lends it well to salads and savory breakfast dishes like quiches and frittatas. It also melts well, making a mean pasta sauce addition or pizza topping. While it is creamy and soft, it also holds its shape, so you can slice it into coins, which I like to coat in breadcrumbs and air fry. If I'm serving this cheese to a crowd, I'll sometimes roll a whole log in chopped herbs and spices, giving it an extra pop of flavor. It's a beautiful pairing with fruit, too, adding a salty and sour element to contrast with sweet ingredients. There's almost nothing this goat cheese can't do, so it always finds a place in my Costco cart.

As a long-time restaurant professional, I've tasted and studied all types of cheeses over the years, and I brought that experience and knowledge to this project. The products selected for this tasting consist of Kirkland Signature cheeses that were available at my local Costco store. Once they were procured, I let them come up in temperature before I opened each package. First, I analyzed each cheese's aromas and noted them down. Then I tasted them, beginning with the young fresh cheeses and moving to the longer-aged ones. I went back to re-taste them several times, and tried them in various ways and with different accompaniments.

I judged each cheese based mainly on aroma, flavor, and texture. Once I had those noted down, I compared them to the typical characteristics of that particular style and assessed how well the Kirkland Signature cheese matched up to those expectations. I also took into account each cheese's usefulness and versatility, giving extra advantages to the cheeses that I could imagine utilizing in multiple ways. What came into play next, and what ultimately helped me decide which to buy or skip, was value. I compared the prices of similar cheeses from other retailers to figure out which cheeses are the best buys at Costco.