2026 NEW ARRIVALS FROM ZIEREISEN

Firstly, a note that if you missed the previous two tastings from March '26, they can be found here: Dautel and here: Glatzer.

This might be a time to revisit my practice of always tasting a wine from at least two different glasses. I’d say that the wines are the same (or close enough) maybe a quarter of the time. That’s to say it didn’t matter which glass I used. The other 75% of the time there was a decisive difference, important enough to look for a through-line to try and see what the wine offered in and of itself. Usually the Jancis was the superior glass, but sometimes it was too articulate and seemed to make the wines ill at ease.

This does not indicate that anyone needs fifty different kinds of glasses. Everyone needs the few that work best, which is to say, the ones that are ecumenical which wines they flatter. My little Spiegelau “white-wine” stem is never wrong; even if it’s not the “best” glass it’s always good. Often the digital pixilation of flavors we get from. the Jancis is welcome, and sometimes it isn’t. (It’s always welcome with old wines, especially reds, such as a staggering bottle of Berberana Gran Reserva 1952 we drank two nights ago. One of the two greatest Riojas I’ve ever had, and it tasted as though its very destiny was to be drunk from that very glass.

Back to the matter at hand….

While I was tasting the Spätburgunders (which I’d saved for last, of course) I happened to drink a bottle of 1989 Nuits Ste Georges Les Cailles, a Premier Cru neighboring Les Ste Georges itself. It was an immersion in a beautiful atavism, and reminded me how differently we thought of “Burgundy” in those days. We had Anthony Hansen’s famous remark that “Great Burgundy smells like shit,” and while I wouldn’t go that far I did think, while drinking and loving that ’89, that a certain animality was to be expected as a Burgundy paradigm. Yes there were plenty of refined polished wines back then, but there was a basic class of farmy wines that smelled not like dung but like crotch, which permitted us to take a feral pleasure in wines that also had attributes of “significance.” Such foul and gorgeous flowers, rising from the muds.

Ziereisen’s Pinot Noirs, even as (relatively) rough-hewn as they are, still speak today’s prevailing dialect of gloss, focus and careful diction. And we love this, at least I do, but now and again we may recall the pagan dance of olden-days Burgundy, with all the glorious raunch and abandon they could show.

(Note; though I received these in 2026 they were shipped in the Fall of ’25, so these were the prevailing vintages at that time. Also, the assortment is a sort of greatest-hits, excluding the everyday levels, which I understand. I’ll cite the missing wines if pertinent.)

TASTING SEQUENCE will be Syrahs, whites, and then Spätburgunders. Over at least two days, though I’ll live with these wines for at least a week, as they can be true shape-shifters.