Now the cork in the bottle has been loosened, and the genies of race, religion, free speech and western-style liberal values have begun to escape.
The charms of this land of wheatfields, cork oak forests, wildflower meadows and tiny white-washed villages, are more subtle than in France or Italy's poster regions.
The waiter took the cork out of a very good Barolo and poured in earnest, and we sat around like kings of San Siro until the team sheet arrived.
We followed her advice, walking down to the stream in search of terrapins and otters, or through clusters of cork oak trees, their branches hairy with lichen like the ancient trees of a fairytale forest.
Once out on the night fishing run, when the nets are cast, with tea-tray sized cork buoys topped with diesel-lit, naked flames as markers, we drink warm, sugary chai as the sun sets over the Arabian Sea.
To cook the rhubarb, cut it into short lengths (about the size of a wine cork), then pack them into a medium-sized saucepan.
Pinterest is like a mass of cork boards with "pinned" references, resources, ideas, links and videos.
You stand 22 yards away from a bowler, armed with a 4in-wide piece of wood and try to hit a 5oz piece of cork and leather travelling at 90 miles per hour.
As was the tradition, the execution took place at dawn and attracted a crowd of several hundred who came to make a party out of it – "to see a murderer's head pop like a champagne cork", as one gore-hound put it.
Sabaté Diosos is about to build a factory in Spain, which has extensive cork-oak forests, and wine bottled with laundered corks should hit the shelves early in 2005.Which is fine for traditionalists.
Mr Hashimoto has no trouble convincing the Chinese who, as firm believers in the "cork-in-the-bottle" theory, much prefer to see Japan locked into a co-operative defence arrangement with America than left to go it militarily alone.
