commodity fetish

1 1/2 oz Unsweetened Aged Rum (Appleton Signature)
3/4 oz Amaro Montenegro
3/4 oz Punt e Mes
1/2 oz Crème de Cacao (Tempus Fugit)
2 dash Angostura Bitters

Stir with ice, strain into a cocktail coupe, and garnish with an orange peel-cherry flag.

Two Sundays ago, the Baldwin Bar posted the World's Fair on their Instagram as their throwback drink spotlight. The recipe was created by Vannaluck Hongtong back in 2016 as a rather Winter-feeling Manhattan spin, and my fond memories inspired me to riff on it. I changed the rye to aged rum, the walnut liqueur to chocolate, and swapped Fee's Whiskey Barrel Bitters to double the amount of Angostura to add more spice and dryness. I took the crème de cacao route since I felt that it would combine with the Amaro Montenegro to make similar delightful chocolate-orange flavors that cacao does with Campari in drinks such as the Flaquita and Stagecoach Mary.
For a name, I began to search for World's Fair-inspired phrases, and I found Walter Benjamin's 1935 comment about how World's Fairs "are places of pilgrimage to the commodity fetish." Andrea commented that any reference to a Karl Marx philosophy was a good one to imbibe to, so Commodity Fetish was the winner. Once prepared, it donated orange and dark notes to the nose. Next, caramel and grape swirled through the sip, and the swallow greeted the tongue with rum, bitter chocolate, clementine, clove, and allspice flavors. Overall, the Commodity Fetish fulfilled its task of serving as a good dessert-nightcap libation albeit one a bit sweeter than my normal palate.