Maple Bacon Old Fashioned

Bacon fat-washed bourbon and maple syrup — descended from Don Lee's 2007 PDT Benton's Old Fashioned, maple and bacon sharing the caramelized smoke register.

The Maple Bacon Old Fashioned is a direct descendant of the Benton's Old Fashioned — the landmark fat-washed bourbon cocktail created by Don Lee at PDT (Please Don't Tell) in New York City in 2007 — and represents the spread of the fat-washing technique from a single bar innovation into a broader culinary cocktail idiom. Don Lee's original recipe used rendered fat from Benton's Smoky Mountain Country Hams, a Tennessee cured meat producer whose hickory-smoked products have a devoted following among American chefs. The Maple Bacon variation applies the same fat-washing logic — infusing bourbon with rendered bacon fat at room temperature for several hours, then freezing and filtering to remove the solidified fat — but uses generic cured bacon rather than a specifically branded product, and adds maple syrup as the sweetening element rather than simple syrup. Pure maple syrup — produced from the boiled sap of sugar maple trees, primarily in Quebec, Vermont, and New York State, with Canada producing roughly 70-75% of the world's supply — adds a distinctive earthy sweetness that interacts naturally with the bacon's smokiness, the two flavors sharing the same caramelized, slightly bitter register of wood-fired cooking. The combination of fat-washed bourbon, maple, and Angostura bitters in the Old Fashioned framework produces a drink that tastes simultaneously of breakfast and cocktail hour in a way that is distinctive and coherent.