If we were playing a round of word association a few years ago and you said, “Rye,” I wouldn’t have skipped a beat before saying, “Pastrami.” For most of my drinking life, rye whiskey seemed like tough-guy stuff, cowboy stuff. And to drink as they drank (or at least as I imagined they did) seemed affected or unduly performative. Why would I replace my everyday Irish whiskey with rye? Why trade the bourbon in my manhattan for another brown American spirit?

For the same reason, it turns out, that I want that pastrami on rye instead of on white — the flavor of the grain. While bourbon must include at least 51 percent corn in its grain composition, American rye whiskey must contain no less than 51 percent rye. The resulting dryness and earthiness, that spice and faint sourness are irresistible to me, as is rye’s wonderful chewiness.

I’d like to think that rye’s resurgence is partly a reaction against the snootiness that often accompanies the consumption of Scottish single malts. But I also think that whiskey drinkers are, like me, simply responding to rye’s many inherent virtues, including its budget-friendliness. There are “top shelf” rye whiskeys, sure, but it’s pretty hard to be a snob. More often than not, I steer my customers toward one of the greatest liquor bargains I know: Old Overholt, which, at about $20 a bottle, deserves a place in any home bar too. In the same price range, Rittenhouse is another solid, flavorful stalwart, fine on its own and for mixing. In the $50 range, I enjoy Russell’s Reserve, for its nuttiness, and Templeton, for its exceptional dryness.

Rye’s cowboy reputation isn’t totally unfounded. Though the drink was born on the East Coast — there were distillers in 18th-century Pennsylvania — rye became associated with the West thanks to the singing cowboy Tex Ritter’s hit “Rye Whiskey,” his version of the folk song “Jack O’Diamonds.” (The song was also recorded by another true son of the West, Woody Guthrie.)