There are few things in American food culture that feel as locked in as bacon. It doesn't need much help. It smells right, it tastes right, and it's been doing exactly what it does for decades without anyone asking it to try harder. So when Oscar Mayer says it's dropping its first new bacon product in five years, that's not nothing. And when the new product is cured with actual bourbon — Evan Williams Bourbon, specifically — it's worth paying attention.
The product is called Oscar Mayer Maple Bourbon Bacon, and it's hitting grocery store shelves nationwide now.
What's Actually in the Package
This isn't just bacon with a fancy label. The product is thick-cut and expertly trimmed, which already puts it ahead of a lot of what's sitting in the refrigerated meat section. What separates it from the standard maple bacon that's been around forever is the curing process — the bacon is cured with Evan Williams Bourbon, a barrel-aged Kentucky bourbon that brings notes of vanilla and caramel into the mix.
Image credit: Oscar Mayer/Evan Williams
On top of that, Oscar Mayer finishes the bacon with its signature 12-hour slow smoke. That's not a short process. Twelve hours in a smokehouse is the kind of thing that requires patience, and it shows up in the final product. The result, according to the brand, is a sweet, smoky, maple-kissed bite with a smooth bourbon finish — not a gimmick, but a layered flavor profile built on two things that have always complemented each other well.
The combination of maple, smoke, and bourbon isn't a random marketing decision. Recipes pairing maple and bourbon have been climbing steadily in popularity, racking up millions of saves on Pinterest over the past year alone. Oscar Mayer saw where consumer tastes were heading and built a product around it.
Two Brands With Something to Prove
The partnership between Oscar Mayer and Evan Williams makes more sense the longer you think about it. Both are brands with deep American roots, long track records, and reputations built on doing things the right way rather than the flashy way.
Evan Williams is the flagship bourbon of Heaven Hill Distillery and holds the distinction of being the world's second-largest selling bourbon. Its origin traces back to 1783, when the brand's namesake opened Kentucky's first distillery on the banks of the Ohio River. More than two centuries later, the bourbon is still made using the same time-honored methods. That's not marketing copy — it's a production philosophy.
Oscar Mayer, for its part, has been making bacon for 90 years. The brand is owned by Kraft Heinz, which posted approximately $25 billion in net sales in 2025. Bacon alone accounts for a third of Oscar Mayer's business, which gives you a sense of how seriously the company takes anything it does in that category.
"Some flavor pairings just make sense, and Bourbon and bacon is one of them," said Max Stefka, AVP Global Whiskeys at Evan Williams. "Partnering with Oscar Mayer on Maple Bourbon Bacon brings together two iconic flavors in a bold and unexpected way, delivering a sweet-and-smoky twist that celebrates the craftsmanship behind our Bourbon."
That word — craftsmanship — carries weight here. This isn't a celebrity collaboration or a social media stunt. It's two established American food and spirits brands putting their names on something they both had a hand in making.
A New Direction for the Brand
Oscar Mayer isn't treating this as a one-off launch. The Maple Bourbon Bacon is the opening move in what the company is calling a bacon innovation flywheel — a commitment to rolling out a new bacon variety every year, through limited-edition releases and potential additions to the permanent lineup. The goal is to build a consistent pipeline of new flavors that give people more reasons to reach for Oscar Mayer bacon, not just at breakfast, but throughout the day and across different occasions.
"While we have been crafting delicious bacon for 90 years, Maple Bourbon Bacon is an exciting new chapter for our bacon portfolio and shows consumers that we are thinking about bacon differently," said Anna James, Brand Manager for Oscar Mayer. "With the bacon category growing and accounting for one-third of our business, we are leaning into bold, trend-driven flavors our fans want, bringing new energy to a beloved breakfast classic."
That kind of long-term thinking is different from how most food companies operate. The typical playbook is to launch something, see if it sticks, and quietly move on if it doesn't. Oscar Mayer is signaling a structured, year-over-year commitment to keeping its bacon lineup fresh — which is a bigger deal than any single product launch.
How People Are Using It
The obvious use cases are the ones everyone already knows. Thick-cut bacon on a sandwich is hard to argue with, and this version brings something extra to the table. Alongside eggs in the morning, the maple and bourbon notes add a dimension that standard bacon doesn't offer.
But the Maple Bourbon Bacon is also being positioned as a cocktail garnish, which makes complete sense. A strip of smoky, bourbon-cured bacon alongside a Bloody Mary or an Old Fashioned isn't a stretch — it's the kind of thing a good bar would already be doing if they had access to the right bacon. Now that product exists at the grocery store level.
It also works as an ingredient. Bourbon, maple, and smoke are flavors that play well in a wide range of cooking contexts — everything from glazed preparations to charcuterie boards to backyard cookouts where the goal is to put something on the grill that people haven't tasted before.
More Coming This Spring
Oscar Mayer isn't stopping with bacon. The brand is also launching two new hot dogs ahead of summer grilling season. The first is a Beef and Pork Frank, which balances bold beef flavor with juicy pork. The second is a Cheesy Smokehouse Stuffed Hot Dog — a smoky variation on the brand's existing cheese-stuffed line.
Both products reflect the same instinct that drove the Maple Bourbon Bacon: give people something familiar that still manages to deliver a little more than they expected. For a brand with Oscar Mayer's history, that balance between tradition and evolution is exactly the right place to be operating.
The Bottom Line
Oscar Mayer Maple Bourbon Bacon is the rare product launch that earns its own attention. It's backed by real craft — a 12-hour smoke, a legitimate bourbon partner with centuries of production history, and a thick-cut format that respects the product. It's not trying to reinvent bacon. It's just making bacon better, in a direction that a lot of people are already headed anyway.
For anyone who takes their breakfast seriously, or who's been looking for a reason to put something unexpected on a charcuterie board or next to a weekend cocktail, this is worth picking up when it hits the shelf near you.
