Bulleit rye
Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk
If you want to use a relatively cheap but awesome straight forward bourbon, Evan Williams 1783 is a superb bang for the buck bourbon and would mix well with sours. Prices vary, I can get it here in the Indiana burbs of Cincinnati for about $18 a bottle, the range is usually $15-22.
I’m gonna disagree with everyone who says “if you’re mixing, it doesn’t matter.” If you can’t taste the booze in a drink, you’re making it wrong. You don’t want a drink where all you taste is the mixer, unless you’re someone who simply doesn’t care for cocktails at all.
I do, however, think there’s diminishing returns the higher-end you get. Pick a good solid whiskey, something like a Maker’s Mark or Bulleit. Once you get to that level, going for the $50 bottle is a fun experiment, but not really necessary, and depending on the drink can sometimes even result in a worse drink if you don’t adjust the mixers and such appropriately.
I’m inclined to go with this, with something like a Four Roses or Old Granddad bonded. Affordable, but still drinkable. The citrus really does (to me, at least) kill the subtleties of whisky.
If you can’t taste the booze, you’re not putting enough in. However, as has been mentioned, with the mixer, it masks the nuance that expensive boozes are known for, so don’t bother.
I’ve cut back a ton, but I did buy a bottle of Jim Beam Pre-Prohibition Rye a few weeks ago, and made some yummy cocktails with it. Don’t know if you would properly call them old-fashioned, sours, half-assed sazeracs or what. 
But they were damned fine. It was cheap, too, maybe $20 as Beam tends to be.
My “recipe”: always a squished wedge of lemon, but sometimes I muddle some maraschino cherries and/or mandarin oranges as well. A dash of bitters (orange, rhubarb, or Peychaud) if handy. Shake, strain, serve over ice if feeling fancy. Otherwise, all in the same glass and maybe top off with something carbonated. No need for sugar or syrup with that fruit.
Folks should use whatever they like. But with that said I would find it ludicrous to use expensive, quality bourbon like Bookers or Pappy Van Winkles to make something like a whiskey sour. Completely absurd!
I was at a wedding once with an open bar with Johnnie Walker Blue available where I saw a guest order a scotch & 7up with the blue. :eek: I mean, yeah, have at it if your host is stocking the bar with Blue, but what a waste of an overpriced, but quite fine, whiskey. (Last wedding I was at, a guest snuck me a Blue at the end of the night that was filled to the brim with ice. Not as egregious a sin, but it may as well have been Red in there for all I could taste.)
I was meaning in a general sense; no point in using a top shelf spirit for a drink with a lot of other flavors. A good example would be to use 10 Cane or some other expensive white rum in a La Floridita/Hemingway daiquiri. Or for that matter in a rum and coke. $12 Cruzan will do just fine.
Similarly nobody sane is going to use hors d’ age cognac to make a sidecar, but it’s probably worth using VS instead of E&J Gallo brandy.
That said, in spirit forward drinks like Sazeracs or Old Fashioneds, the quality does matter. I still don’t think I’d waste Pappy Van Winkle on any cocktail, but moving up to say Knob Creek or Elijah Craig would pay dividends.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk
Just as a side note: E&J is my brandy of choice for coffee.
Which makes sense; coffee is a intensely flavored beverage in its own right, so any nuance from better brandy will likely be lost.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk