Australia, unlike our American cousins, who have a long and committed relationship with tequila, is still in the first flushes of love with Mexican spirits. But that hasn’t stopped our drinks scene from falling for a tequila classic, the Toreador, a relative obscurity in the States. Despite the late-blooming appreciation for agave here, the drink is well-known in Australia and a standard entry in the mental recipe book of most professional Aussie bartenders.
A simple daisy-style cocktail of tequila, lime juice and apricot brandy, the Toreador first appears in the pages of William J. Tarling’s 1937 bartending guide, the Café Royal Cocktail Book. Mr. Tarling sat on the council of the United Kingdom Bartenders Guild, recording guild-approved cocktail recipes in Café Royal along with plenty of his own concoctions. Today, the Toreador is considered a variation on the Margarita. Curiously, though, the Margarita didn’t appear in print under that name until a full 16 years after the publication of Tarling’s book. (He does include a recipe of tequila, lime juice and Cointreau, but calls it a Picador.)
Perhaps Cointreau’s midcentury marketing team is to thank for the more-famous daisy, or maybe it’s because oranges are cheaper and more widely available than apricots. Either way, the Margarita has clearly won the popularity contest. But the case for the Toreador is still a strong one, and in Australia, the drink commands considerable respect. Many bartenders here, myself included, learned to make cocktails by modifying the classics that everyone knows. So when someone asks for “a Margarita, but different,” we always suggest the El Diablo, the Tommy’s and the Toreador. Much like a Bobby Burns or a Boulevardier, we consider it a standard variation of a foundational recipe.
Hayden Lambert, owner of Above Board in Melbourne, Australia, describes the Toreador as a drink that’s “classic but not extremely well-known,” which fits with the bar’s ethos of putting twists on traditional cocktails. As one of the first venues in the country to eliminate the backbar and forgo the clutter of brand-heavy bric-a-brac, Above Board feels like a sleek, modern omakase restaurant.
Above Board keeps its Toreador fairly classic, combining Los Arcos blanco tequila with Catron apricot liqueur, fresh lime juice and a little sugar. “With classics we stay pretty traditional,” says Lambert, who suggests that the apricot brandy produced by Marionette, a local craft producer of Australian fruit liqueurs, could be used for a more modern interpretation of the drink.
Marionette has quickly become a favorite of cocktail bartenders and is helping to breathe new life into classics like the Toreador. Marionette’s apricot liqueur is much less sweet than most commercial brands. “We use two kinds of locally grown apricot, one sweet variety and one sour, so it’s a very fruit-forward spirit which punches through the citrus in classic drinks like the Toreador,” says Marionette co-founder Hugh Leech. “We also use high-quality Australian brandy, which gives our liqueur a rich, toasty backbone and adds a nice bit of complexity to the cocktail.”
In Sydney, meanwhile, the Mucho Group of bars has been a huge force in Australia’s adoption of agave spirits. The award-winning venues, including Tio’s, Cantina OK! and the newly opened Centro 86, are considered among the best bars in the country, and all peddle their tequila cocktails with passion. “We had an almost classic Toreador on the menu at Tio’s for years,” says Mucho Group’s creative director, Jeremy Blackmore. “It’s such a great, simple drink that gets overlooked,” he says. Blackmore added Angostura bitters to the mix, “which took it to an almost tropical place we really liked.” At Cantina OK!, a standing-only tequila bar hidden down an urban alley, twists on the drink have included everything from pasilla chiles to apricot wood–aged tequila, which the bar does in-house. (Blackmore says you don’t need a bespoke spirit for the drink to shine, though, and recommends a spicy reposado for it, “something without too much age on it, like Arette.”)
But even outside of trailblazing agave-focused bars like Cantina OK! or high-concept spaces like Above Board, the Toreador thrives. Blackmore perfectly sums up its appeal to modern bartenders and drinkers alike: “It’s simple, but also simply delicious. It is balanced and classic, but also leaves lots of scope for reimagination,” he says. “Plus, it’s got a really cool name. It always makes me want to sing the song Toreador en Garde.”
