There are few food experts as discerning as the bacon connoisseur. Fried up crispy or limp next to eggs, nestled between ample layers of Iowa-grown lettuce and tomatoes, covered with chocolate, or used for added flavor in, well, just about anything, bacon lovers know their bacon.

So when Vande Rose Farms bacon was named “Best Bacon in the Country” by America’s Bacon Critic Scott Gold on Time Inc.’s website "Extra Crispy," the bacon world took note. Gold said the bacon “spoke to his...