“ Arriba! Arriba! ” he said. “Lift it up.”

Bill raised the wineskin and let the stream of wine spurt out and into his mouth, his head tipped back. When he stopped drinking and tipped the leather bottle down a few drops ran down his chin.

“No! No!” several Basques said. “Not like that.” One snatched the bottle away from the owner, who was himself about to give a demonstration. He was a young fellow and he held the wine-bottle at full arms’ length and raised it high up, squeezing the leather bag with his hand so the stream of wine hissed into his mouth. He held the bag out there, the wine making a flat, hard trajectory into his mouth, and he kept on swallowing smoothly and regularly.

“Hey!” the owner of the bottle shouted. “Whose wine is that?”