Last night I had TearDrop's classic cocktail of the day, the Inca. It was great--perfectly balanced.

When I got home I decided to make one myself to see how it compared. It turned out pretty good, but not nearly as good as TearDrop's. The ingredients I used were all different: I used a low-end, but very good for $12 gin called New Amsterdam (which is a good choice in gin and tonics, by the way) instead of presumably Plymouth gin (but I'm not sure), Vermouth Di Torino Rosso for my sweet vermouth instead of whatever they used, and Ponti instead of Vya dry vermouth. I also used Fee Brothers orange bitters, but I'm not sure if they used that or house orange bitters. I'm assuming they used house bitters since pretty much all of their bitters are house. The sherry I used was also crappy. See a trend here?

Another notable difference is that they used real, house-made orgeat instead of my crappy Fee Brothers fake orgeat. The orgeat is a key ingredient in this cocktail and many others, so I should really try making my own one of these days.

My homemade drink had an overpowering sweet vermouth taste, so I might try it again with less of that, or with a different brand (I have some Martini & Rossi and some LeJon in the cupboard, so maybe I'll try those, even though neither is exactly high end).

So if you want to make a drink, make it right! But it's also fun to compare the results of your own concoction with those of the pros.

p.s., I can highly recommend using CocktailDB.com for drink recipes. They tend to use the most legitimate recipes. The Inca recipe is the same as the recipe from The Savoy Cocktail Book, which is about as legitimate as you're going to find.