For generations, a particular black cherry soda sat quietly on the tables of Schwartz's in Montreal — not chosen so much as inherited, a small ritual folded into a larger one. Rising aluminum costs slowly strangled its supply until the soda was discontinued entirely, forcing one of the city's most storied delis to seek a local replacement. The episode is a modest but telling reminder that even the most enduring institutions are threaded through with invisible supply chains, and that the pressures reshaping global commodity markets eventually find their way to the smallest, most familiar things