There's a drink called the Toreador — tequila, apricot liqueur, lime juice, simple syrup — that has been sitting in the shadow of the Margarita for decades. Punch reports that in Australia it's a genuine classic, a standard entry in the mental recipe book of most professional bartenders there. Jeremy Blackmore, creative director for Sydney's Mucho Group, calls it "such a great, simple drink that gets overlooked." In North America, it's essentially invisible.
This is worth sitting with. The Toreador predates the Margarita — a drink that now accounts for a staggering share of tequila consumption globally — and yet it never got the canonical status. Why? The honest answer is probably distribution of cultural attention, not quality. The Margarita had the right bars, the right moment, the right geography. The Toreador had apricot liqueur, which is one of those ingredients that reads as fussy or dated to American palates trained on citrus-and-salt simplicity.
That's a failure of framing, not formula. Apricot liqueur in a tequila drink does something genuinely interesting: it softens the agave's edge without burying it, adds stone fruit depth that lime alone can't provide, and bridges the gap between spirit-forward and refreshing. It's closer in spirit to the Margarita than the Margarita's endless riffs are — and yet those riffs (spicy, frozen, smoked, clarified) get menu real estate while the Toreador gets nothing.
The Rosita Problem Is the Same Problem
The Toreador isn't alone. Punch also highlights the Rosita — a tequila Negroni variant using both sweet and dry vermouth, associated with Gary "Gaz" Regan — as another tequila classic that's been lapped by the mezcal Negroni trend despite being the older, arguably more nuanced drink. The pattern is consistent: a solid, balanced original gets eclipsed not because something better replaced it, but because something newer got the marketing moment.
This is the marketing-to-substance ratio problem in miniature. Bars are not short on tequila cocktails. They are short on tequila cocktails that aren't the Margarita, the Paloma, or whatever smoky-spicy riff someone photographed well last season. The Toreador and the Rosita are both sitting there, fully formed, requiring no reinvention. They just need someone to put them on a menu without an asterisk.
Make the Toreador. Tequila, apricot liqueur, fresh lime, a touch of simple syrup. Shake it hard. See if it needs the Margarita's help.