Nacina Santa Lucia Highlands Riesling, by Dan Tudor 5-Pack
$69.99 $117.00 40% off List Price
2012 Nacina Riesling, Tondré Vineyards, Santa Lucia Highlands
CT link above
Last week FedEx gave me a shout that an unexpected single arrived with some other shipments, and wondered if they should do anything special with it. ‘Why yes, of course, open it and see what’s inside…’
2012 Nacina Wines Riesling Tondré Vineyard, Santa Lucia Highlands, Paso Robles
Ooookay, seems like that should go in your fridge till I get there, thankyouverymuch.
PnP at fridge temp 9.6C; way too cold.
Pale straw with a citrus and grapefruit nose, the kind that leaves that metallic acid residue tingling all about your tongue and mouth, something else as well, but it’g going to need to warm up first. Medium+ finish is leaving something hinting, just, of some kind of sweetness.
Supper was to be some Balsamic Chicken browned then finished in a soy-chicken stock with olives, shallots, thyme and garnished with thyme and chives. Also had some asparagus and red taters roasted in evoo on the side. Would rather have had a curry or something with a bit more spice to it, but swmbo pre-planned the menu.
So while the chicken is cooking and the glass is warming, I begin some sleuthing.
Never heard of Nacina, but a bit of research starting from the back label
*www.nacinawines.com *
heads off to some unfinished landing page, but additional searching I discover this wine can be found at
http://store.tudorwines.com/nacina-2012-riesling-tondre-vineyards-santa-lucia-highlands-p53.aspx#
and the funny thing here is the browser banner reads “Radog Wines, 2007 Riesling”
and strongly suggests this is from our old friend Dan Tudor of the 2007 Radog Wines Riesling fame that I stocked up on a case of back in early May of '12. Sadly, all of those I had here locally were consumed last year as I’d have liked to taste next to the '12; pretty sure it’s the same source for the fruit.
Glass has warmed to 17.7C and the grapefruit is still dominant but now there are hints of tropical fruit as well. Swmbo thinks apricot; she’s got a better nose than I, but given the suggestion I can agree. That brisk acidity has been tempered as it warmed and been replaced by some spice; a bit rounder mouth now as well. Allowed to warm to 22C the acidity seems to turn a bit bitter.
Stood up well to the rather mild chicken. The balsamic and shallots mixed well with thyme and didn’t need much palate cleaning that the Nacina amply provided. Swmbo approved, and poured an ample glass; that surprised me.
Recorked with a Zork and filled a 375 for day two.
Still wanted to compare to the '07, so I headed to the locker to grab a bottle.
Foiled, the door fob had me locked out; nasty-gram sent expressing my displeasure as I also had a few cases to drop off.
Still couldn’t make the curry happen either, so we ended up with a bowl of spicy udon that did better than the chicken from yesterday.
No profile change from yesterday, but given the full 375 that was expected.
Now that I’ve read the winery TN’s, I get the melon they speak of, but neither of us did unprompted, and the sweetness could be the honey as well.
I want my '07 to see where this may go…
Still have some left. I’ll leave some air on it for tomorrow, and try again for the Radog.
Looking up winery notes I see this is 11.8% AbV with a quite low pH of 3.07 and RS at 1.59%.
Technically off-dry, but that RS really doesn’t show up until this warms a bit.
While this could be a sipper, for us it really seems to do better with some nibbles or a meal.
No case discounts from the winery suggested $20/btl but club membership gives 20% and FS on a case of PN, no mention of a discount here, but I’m thinking WD likely did some arm twisting.
Being a long-time lover of good Riesling, I was delighted to have an opportunity to taste the 2012 Nacina Riesling Tondré Vineyard the other night. It had a wonderful delicate nose of pears and green apples, not a hint of heat. The same fruits showed on the palate, with a perfect balance of sugar and acidity. With dinner, kale and chickpea ravioli with pesto sauce, it held up without losing any of its charm. It seemed off-dry, but sometimes the fruit fools the palate. In any case, I thought it was great with dinner as well as on its own, a perfect wine to enjoy in the park this summer while watching a performance of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors.
EDIT: At $15 + tax shipped, a nice deal. We’ll be adding it to an already overflowing cellar.
The other day we had the opportunity to open a bottle of the 2012 Nacina Tondré Vineyard Santa Lucia Highlands Riesling. My, what a nice bottle of wine this is! This wine is a light, pale straw color. It has a pleasant nose of melon and pear with just a hint of petrol, which may be found in Riesling. However, it is not objectionable. Upon first taste, I found a lot of green apple and grapefruit but with a certain smoothness. It was fresh and full-bodied with a long finish. This is a well-balanced, well-made wine that held up well to a meal of Kale, Hummus & Chickpea Ravioli with Pesto Sauce. This wine still maintained its character even with such heavy-duty flavors. I would be happy to add this wine to our cellar—summer is coming, or so they say. This wine will be very enjoyable once it does arrive and we can sit and drink it on the porch. Good QPR.
Dan,
Welcome back!
Same fruit as the '07 Radog?
Can you compare the two?
The Radog is still going strong.
Thanks to rj, d-dog and bahwm for the helpful tasting notes. I really enjoyed Dan’s 2007 Radog Riesling and agree with rj that it is still going strong. Same Santa Lucia Highlands AVA so I also echo rj’s question as to whether it is the same fruit source.
As well as the Radog has aged, I’m going to try to drink these at a rate of no more than 1 per year to see how the wine develops.
First sucker: chipgreen
Hi All,
Thank you for the great notes! The fruit is from the Santa Lucia Highlands, however, not from the same vineyards as the Radog. This Nacina fruit is from newer clones that Tondre’ Vineyard planted around 8 years ago. It seems the newer clones from Germany have less virus which is probably why the flavors are better and more complex. Healthier vines, tastier fruit. We just bottled the 2013 last week and it tastes almost identical to the 2012. I think we may be on to something. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do! I just drank a couple glasses tonight with some homemade Thai chicken curry french fusion crepe 
Happy to anwser any questions before passing out here!
Cheers!
Dan
Nacina 2012 Riesling, Tondre Vineyard, Santa Lucia Highlands
12% alc., no statement of RS or style on the bottle.
A banana-wielding monkey drove by in a roadster, grabbed a bottle of this and flung it my way. While my officemates were rather startled, I’m always somewhat ready to be the target of such an attack so I managed to reflexively duck while sticking my hand out to just the right spot. Behold! A bottle of Nacina 2012 Tondre Vineyard SLH Riesling! Molarchae should like this seeing as how it’s her favourite grape. And that vineyard name, it sounds familiar…wasn’t that the same as a late harvest Riesling from Tudor a while back? I took it home a day later and put it in the freezer to cool it off for immediate drinking.
After rather unceremoniously twisting off its cap, I poured a sample. (Hey, it was a long day!) First off, the colour is a nice pale straw – neither watery nor the kind of bright yellow you can get in some Chardonnays. The first sniff brought a big dose of flowers. Great! Not one of those wimpy bland Rieslings you sometimes find out there. There is a hint of diesel on the nose as well – that oily sense you often get in a typical Riesling. Another good sign. There’s a bit of tropical fruit and something spicy there as well. Not really getting the melon on the nose that the label suggests is there, although there is a hint of grapefruit. No matter…smells nice.
First sip and I’m surprised to find it slightly effervescent. Not in a flawed way or anything, but just the tiniest bit of spritz. The wine is moderately viscous – heading into the lighter end of medium bodied. Flavours are lemon, grass (does that make lemongrass?), lychee, honey, and limestone. The acidity is nice, but not overly bracing. The wine is definitely balanced when at the cool end of room temperature. There’s a hint of sweetness on the finish, but I’m having a hard time telling if it’s the fruit or a touch of RS. Either way this is a dry wine, or you could argue it’s slightly off-dry. Otherwise the finish is lemon turning into lime and diesel, then towards straw. Medium length.
I’m not sure if this is going to get significantly better with time, although forgetting about a bottle for a few years would be interesting to revisit. For me, this would be good QPR around the $15 range. But hey, it’s pretty damn tasty now, so who cares. For $20 you can get more immediately interesting examples of Riesling.
molarchae should be posting her thoughts soon also. We demolished this bottle pretty handily, both with and without food. We had a bunch of chicken wings that needed eating, so it was Buffalo wings…not an optimal pairing, but way better than I’d have expected.
If we weren’t overflowing with wine it’d be easy to grab a set at this reasonable price and try the next one in about 18 months, then one per year for a while.
Thank you chipgreen! I’m confident you’re going to love it! Cheers! Dan
No shipping to Virginia? My first time trying to buy wine, and I was surprised that it cannot be be shipped to my state. 
Wine.Woot is currently not able to offer wine deals in certain states, but will be opening up additional states as laws and regulations regarding selling wine online continue to evolve.
You’re welcome to also check out this thread to discuss and talk about current Wine Shipping Laws
Visiting the Tudor Wines site, I see they ship directly to Virginia (and other verböten commonwealths), and Dan has contact info for international shipping.
May want to ask him if he can accommodate you and other states mothership has on the currently prohibited list.
If anyone does that, please come back and give us a shout.
As for the above VA poster, we’re nevah nevah going to get wines from wine woot until the laws change here. It’s not a matter of interpretation or clarification, the state’s laws were changed in late 2012 which now disallow 3rd party marketers like Woot to sell alcohol without jumping through basically impossible hoops. Try raising a polite fuss with your local politicians, it’s not a woot/amazon issue in VA.
Once I opened the bottle, that had mysteriously arrived at my local FedEx, I noticed that the twist top seemed to be more of an upscale version. Dan, can you speak to that? It’s not just metal with plastic on the flat part of the top. It has a type of plastic for the screw ridges. Thanks!
I noticed that as well. I think it’s the Stelvin® Lux, but would like confirmation as to the liner and OTR.
Sorry about Woot not being able to ship to VA at the moment. Please go to www.tudorwines.com and order. I’ll make sure the office adjusts the amount charged to match the woot offer before running the card. Our cart is pretty easy to use. Thank you! Cheers!
Thanks for the question! Yes, that’s a Stelvin Lux closure. A screw cap with tin liner, but the threads are in the inside so the cap looks more upscale. We prefer the look over the standard screw-caps.
Cheers!
Dan
And here is the direct link for today’s offer.
And thanks for helping out those in challenged locations.
Dan, regarding the closure, this one appears to be the classic Saran Tin and Saranex. Have you experimented with any of the higher tech controlled liners I see are available since the Amcor acquisition?
Are you using any of these on your PN’s?
A+ reviews guys thanks for the great notes and thoughts on this wine. We don’t drink much Riesling at home but we enjoy it in its dry and slightly off-dry versions. The acid numbers look good like its going to be bright and crisp. Very tempting.