Toreador

A pre-Margarita classic from 1937 combining tequila with apricot brandy and lime for a fruity, balanced sour.

The Toreador first appeared in print in William J. "Bill" Tarling's 1937 Cafe Royal Cocktail Book, the London bar guide that recorded more than a dozen early tequila cocktails years before the Margarita's first written mention. Tarling, a founding figure of the United Kingdom Bartenders Guild and later instrumental in the International Bartenders Association, built the Toreador on a simple sour framework: tequila, apricot brandy, and fresh lime or lemon juice, shaken and strained. The apricot brandy supplies a stone-fruit sweetness — carrying the benzaldehyde almond note characteristic of apricot spirits — that softens the lime's acidity while leaving the agave character in the foreground. The drink's name references the toreador, the bullfighter, part of a cluster of bullfighting-themed tequila drinks in Tarling's book that also included the Picador (tequila, Cointreau, lime), a near-exact predecessor of the Margarita. The Toreador is best understood as a fruit-accented sour and an early ancestor of the Margarita rather than the cream-based after-dinner drink it is sometimes confused with.