Some bottles carry a little whisper of legend about them, the kind of names drinkers trade like secrets across a bar. Eagle Rare and Sazerac Rye are two of the very best. For a while they were the ones that got away, forever just out of reach. The lovely news is that they are back within easy reach again, and they are every bit as good as the whispering always suggested.

Back within reach

There was a spell, not so long ago, when tracking down a bottle of Eagle Rare felt like a small quest. Bartenders knew a guy. Collectors set alerts. If you spotted one on a shelf, you bought it and felt quietly triumphant for the rest of the day. That chase had its romance, but it did rather get in the way of the main event, which is the simple pleasure of drinking the stuff.

Happily, the treasure hunt has eased right off. These days the great everyday legends of Kentucky are turning up on shelves again, calm as you like, at the sort of prices that were always the point. It is a very good moment to be curious about American whiskey. So let's pour two of the finest and talk about why they are worth your evening.

One distillery, a cabinet full of legends

Both of tonight's bottles come from Buffalo Trace, and it is worth knowing the address. It sits on a bend of the Kentucky River in Frankfort, it has been distilling on the same spot since the eighteenth century, and it was one of a tiny handful of distilleries allowed to keep running straight through Prohibition, on a licence to make medicinal whiskey. It is now a National Historic Landmark, which is a grand way of saying the place is a cathedral to the craft.

Here is the lovely bit of pub ammunition, though. Eagle Rare, Sazerac, Blanton's, Weller, George T. Stagg and the almost mythical Pappy Van Winkle all flow out of that same distillery, largely from two mash bills. The bottle collectors dream about and the one on the everyday shelf are, in a very real sense, cousins raised in the same house. Once you know that, every pour feels a little more special.

Eagle Rare 10: the £38 bottle worth savouring

Eagle Rare is Buffalo Trace's low-rye bourbon, aged a full ten years and bottled at 90 proof, which is 45% in real money. It was born in 1975, launched by Seagram's as a 101-proof, ten-year-old bird of prey. Sazerac took the brand under its wing in 1989, moved it home to Buffalo Trace, and in 2005 softened it to the 90 proof it wears today.

Pour a measure and you understand the devotion at once: toffee and orange peel on the nose, then leather, honey and a deep, almost chocolatey richness. It is a bourbon in a velvet smoking jacket, made to be sipped slowly by someone in a generous mood. That it costs less than £40 is one of the happier surprises in whiskey.

Sazerac Rye 6: the baby with very famous siblings

If Eagle Rare is the elegant one, Sazerac Rye, known to everyone as Baby Saz, is the sharp-tongued younger sibling, and all the more fun for it. The clever part is the company it keeps. Baby Saz carries the same mash bill and the same proof as Sazerac 18 Year Old and Thomas H. Handy, two cult bottles that change hands for genuinely silly money. In other words, this is the affordable key to a very grand door.

Rye whiskey is spicier and drier than bourbon, all pepper and baking spice where bourbon brings the sweetness. It is also the whiskey America drank before Prohibition, the original grain of the young republic. And it was built, more than anything, for one particular drink.

The cocktail a bug rewrote

The Sazerac may well be the oldest cocktail in America. It was born in 1850s New Orleans, around the Sazerac Coffee House on Exchange Alley, and it took its name from the house pour: Sazerac de Forge Cognac, a French brandy (and, as it happens, a bottle we stock, should you fancy making the original).

Then came the twist in the tale: phylloxera, a tiny aphid that worked its way through the vineyards of France in the 1870s and all but wiped out Cognac. With the French supply gone, thirsty New Orleans reached for American rye instead, and a classic was quietly reinvented. Add Peychaud's bitters, invented by a local apothecary, a sugar cube and a rinse of absinthe, and there it is. Louisiana made the Sazerac the official cocktail of New Orleans in 2008. So the next time someone orders one, you can tell them, with total authority, that it became a rye drink only because an insect nibbled France.

Two icons, one distillery, a little over £40 each, and both happily in stock. If you have ever wondered what the fuss was about, consider this your invitation.

How to pour them

Eagle Rare wants very little from you: neat, or over one large rock, and a little time. Save it for the armchair, not the cocktail shaker. Sazerac Rye is the opposite kind of friend, happiest with a job to do. Build the Sazerac, of course, or let it sharpen an Old Fashioned that a softer bourbon would leave a touch sleepy. It also makes a superb Manhattan. Both, it should be said, are far too good to disappear under a splash of cola.

So there it is: two of the most loved names in American whiskey, back on the shelf and ready for a very good evening. Pour the Eagle Rare slowly and let it unfold. Put the Sazerac Rye to work in a proper cocktail. Either way, raise a glass to the happy fact that the good stuff is, once again, within easy reach. And if you would like to taste the whole Sazerac story in one sitting, we may just have a tasting with your name on it.