Australia, in contrast to our American cousins, who’ve an extended and dedicated relationship with tequila, remains to be within the first flushes of affection with Mexican spirits. However that hasn’t stopped our drinks scene from falling for a tequila basic, the Toreador, a relative obscurity within the States. Regardless of the late-blooming appreciation for agave right here, the drink is well-known in Australia and a normal entry within the psychological recipe e book of {most professional} Aussie bartenders.Â
A easy daisy-style cocktail of tequila, lime juice and apricot brandy, the Toreador first seems within the pages of William J. Tarling’s 1937 bartending information, the Café Royal Cocktail E book. Mr. Tarling sat on the council of the UK Bartenders Guild, recording guild-approved cocktail recipes in Café Royal together with loads of his personal concoctions. At the moment, the Toreador is taken into account a variation on the Margarita. Curiously, although, the Margarita didn’t seem in print below that title till a full 16 years after the publication of Tarling’s e book. (He does embody a recipe of tequila, lime juice and Cointreau, however calls it a Picador.)
Maybe Cointreau’s midcentury advertising and marketing staff is to thank for the more-famous daisy, or perhaps it’s as a result of oranges are cheaper and extra extensively out there than apricots. Both method, the Margarita has clearly received the recognition contest. However the case for the Toreador remains to be a powerful one, and in Australia, the drink instructions appreciable respect. Many bartenders right here, myself included, discovered to make cocktails by modifying the classics that everybody is aware of. So when somebody asks for “a Margarita, however completely different,” we at all times counsel the El Diablo, the Tommy’s and the Toreador. Very like a Bobby Burns or a Boulevardier, we think about it a normal variation of a foundational recipe.
Hayden Lambert, proprietor of Above Board in Melbourne, Australia, describes the Toreador as a drink that’s “basic however not extraordinarily well-known,” which inserts with the bar’s ethos of placing twists on conventional cocktails. As one of many first venues within the nation to get rid of the backbar and forgo the litter of brand-heavy bric-a-brac, Above Board appears like a glossy, trendy omakase restaurant.
Above Board retains its Toreador pretty basic, combining Los Arcos blanco tequila with Catron apricot liqueur, contemporary lime juice and a bit of sugar. “With classics we keep fairly conventional,” says Lambert, who means that the apricot brandy produced by Marionette, an area craft producer of Australian fruit liqueurs, could possibly be used for a extra trendy interpretation of the drink.
Marionette has shortly change into a favourite of cocktail bartenders and helps to breathe new life into classics just like the Toreador. Marionette’s apricot liqueur is far much less candy than most industrial manufacturers. “We use two sorts of regionally grown apricot, one candy selection and one bitter, so it’s a really fruit-forward spirit which punches by way of the citrus in basic drinks just like the Toreador,” says Marionette co-founder Hugh Leech. “We additionally use high-quality Australian brandy, which provides our liqueur a wealthy, toasty spine and provides a pleasant little bit of complexity to the cocktail.”Â
In Sydney, in the meantime, the Mucho Group of bars has been an enormous drive in Australia’s adoption of agave spirits. The award-winning venues, together with Tio’s, Cantina OK! and the newly opened Centro 86, are thought-about among the many finest bars within the nation, and all peddle their tequila cocktails with ardour. “We had an nearly basic Toreador on the menu at Tio’s for years,” says Mucho Group’s artistic director, Jeremy Blackmore. “It’s such an incredible, easy drink that will get ignored,” he says. Blackmore added Angostura bitters to the combo, “which took it to an nearly tropical place we actually favored.” At Cantina OK!, a standing-only tequila bar hidden down an city alley, twists on the drink have included all the things from pasilla chiles to apricot wooden–aged tequila, which the bar does in-house. (Blackmore says you don’t want a bespoke spirit for the drink to shine, although, and recommends a spicy reposado for it, “one thing with out an excessive amount of age on it, like Arette.”)
However even exterior of trailblazing agave-focused bars like Cantina OK! or high-concept areas like Above Board, the Toreador thrives. Blackmore completely sums up its enchantment to trendy bartenders and drinkers alike: “It’s easy, but additionally merely scrumptious. It’s balanced and basic, but additionally leaves plenty of scope for reimagination,” he says. “Plus, it’s acquired a extremely cool title. It at all times makes me wish to sing the tune Toreador en Garde.”
