Day 6 Thursday June 30 2011
The day started with a champagne breakfast as Rene Goutorbe brought two bottles of the Goutorbe Special Club 2000 into the dining room and started pouring them. This got everyone in the right frame of mind before we caught the bus at 9.00 am and drove along the Marne Valley to the small village of Festigny where we visited the Loriot family at Champagne Joseph Loriot-Pagel.

Our tour started with a visit to the vineyard where we saw both Pinot Meunier and Pinot Noir vines. Jean-Philippe Loriot explained the appelation system and it's requirements for plantings and why varieties are planted where they are. After a quick explanation of the pruning system we headed down to the winery where we saw the riddling process in action, both by hand and by the automatic giro pallet.

Joseph Loriot hand disgorges a bottle of Champagne

Then Joseph and Jean-Philippe took us through the disgorging and labelling process before Joseph Loriot gave a demonstration of hand disgorging without freezing the neck.

After the tour of the winery we sat down to a very long lunch which took us through untill 4.00 pm.

Champagnes tasted at lunch were; Joseph Loriot-Pagel Blanc de Blancs 1997 from Jeraboam, Carte D'Or NV, Cuvee de Reserve 2000, Blanc de Blancs 2005 and the Rose NV.
Our evening tasting theme was Rose champagnes where we tasted the Rene Geofroy Saignee, Gosset Grand Rose and Ruinart Rose.