Ingredients
- 45mlTequilaa 100% agave blanco
No Tequila? Mezcal — adds an earthy smokiness — it changes the character of the drink rather than sitting quietly in it
- 22.5mlApricot Liqueur
- 15mlLime Juicefreshly squeezed
- Garnish
- Lime wheel
Make it well
Shaken, properly.
Add the tequila, apricot liqueur and lime juice to your .
Add ice and for 10-12 seconds.
into a chilled coupe.
a lime on top.
On the palate
On the nose it's apricot first, jammy and a bit perfumed, with the lime sharpening it underneath. On tasting the agave arrives before the fruit does, dry and peppery, and then the apricot fills in behind it and softens everything down. The lime stops it turning into a fruit cup, and there's less of it here than in a Margarita on purpose. It's rounder and less bracing than a Margarita and it drinks slower. Apricot liqueurs vary wildly in sweetness, so taste it and pull the measure back if yours is on the syrupy side.
Where it came from
The Toreador is a daisy: spirit, citrus, and something sweet standing in for the liqueur. That is the same template as the Margarita, and this one got into print first. It appears in William J. Tarling's Café Royal Cocktail Book in 1937, tequila with apricot brandy and lime. Tarling ran the bar at the Café Royal in London and sat on the council of the United Kingdom Bartenders Guild, which had been going four years at that point. His book is full of tequila drinks with bullfighting names, the Toreador and the Matador among them, which tells you how London was framing an unfamiliar Mexican spirit in the 1930s: as something exotic and a bit dangerous, sold on the imagery rather than the agave. The Margarita's own first documented appearances land later. We're not going to claim one became the other, because nobody can show that. What's fair to say is that a tequila daisy was in a London bar book in 1937, and the Margarita is a tequila daisy, and "margarita" is Spanish for "daisy". Draw your own conclusions, plenty of people have. Somehow it never travelled. Except to Australia, where it's a standard, and nobody seems entirely sure why.
Keep pouring
If you like the Toreador, try these
The bartender’s note
One drink, one story, one bottle worth buying.
Thursday evening, so you have time to shop. No more than that.