Hugh Johnson > Quotes

“This was the first Roman province of Gaul, its capital the little city of Narbonne and its monuments to Roman enterprise everywhere. Civil engineering does not get much more ambitious than at Ensérune, where hundreds of acres of farmland are sculpted into a single circular basin, draining mysteriously to a central plughole. La Clape in Roman times was an island in the delta of the River Aude, a flat-topped chunk of limestone washed by the Mediterranean, unique I believe on the whole French coast. I went there prospecting for wines with my Wine Club partner Tony Laithwaite. Reds and rosés were the local norm (and Tony’s system to follow the local rugby heroes: the bigger the man, the better the wine).”
― Hugh Johnson, The Life and Wines of Hugh Johnson