Thank you Dan, and it IS an itch. I had a very very long super-detailed site of the performance of every Leica lens ever made, by a famous Leica expert, but that site vanished when my last computer crashed. By the way, I could write practically a treatise on the "LOOK" of almost all of the top enlarging lenses since 1980 (except the APO,s}. The Komuranon S is the Best.
Back in the golden age of photography, after film had advanced to pretty much the level of perfection but before cameras tried to do the thinking for you, photography magazines routinely tested and reviewed lenses. It was a real challenge to stretch the various components to their limits for the optimum image quality. But now that pictures are made up of little squares big enough to drive a truck thru (at least a small truck), it is no longer fashionable to advertise the finer points of optics.
I look at this in a different way, I try to make my photography good enough to be on par with the excellent quality of my lenses to justify owning them, not the other way round, because they're better lenses than I'm a photographer.
By all means use Zeiss lenses if they inspire you more. Optically they impress me too, but least inspiring about them is their price, especially given their lack of features. The way you describe it, it sounds like Nikkors are scarcely better than a coke bottle bottom, which is hardly true.
Side by side on the light box, my Contax G slides have a sparkle that my Nkkors don't, that's all I'm saying.
Look thru a Hasselblad sometime and you'll see that the world is SO pretty!