Bentons Old Fashioned

Bacon fat-washed bourbon, maple syrup, and Angostura bitters — Don Lee's 2007 PDT creation that launched fat-washing as a craft cocktail technique.

Benton's Old Fashioned was created by bartender Don Lee at PDT — Please Don't Tell — the New York City speakeasy bar that opened in 2007 behind a false phone booth inside Crif Dogs hot dog shop on St. Mark's Place in the East Village. Lee's innovation was fat-washing: infusing the bourbon with rendered fat from Benton's Smoky Mountain Country Hams, a Tennessee cured meat producer based in Madisonville that has been smoking hams and bacon over hickory wood for decades, producing an intensely flavored product with a devoted following among American chefs. The fat-washing technique works as follows: melted bacon fat is combined with the bourbon at room temperature and allowed to infuse for four to six hours, during which the fat's flavor compounds are absorbed by the alcohol. The mixture is then frozen, causing the fat to solidify on the surface, where it can be removed entirely, leaving behind a bourbon that carries the savory, smoky flavor of the bacon without any fat content or texture. Lee applied maple syrup and Angostura bitters to complete the Old Fashioned framework, and the resulting cocktail — which tasted unmistakably of bourbon, smoke, and maple without any overt breakfast-food quality — was served exclusively at PDT and became one of the most discussed cocktails of the era. The fat-washing technique spread rapidly through craft cocktail culture, inspiring a generation of bartenders to apply the method to butter, olive oil, duck fat, and other culinary fats.