Slope, rock and neighbours
Published figures disagree, and the disagreement is worth stating rather than averaging. The VDP describes a southwest-oriented slope in a side valley of the Saar, rising to 235 metres above sea level with gradients to 38 percent, on the region's typical slate. The German site riesling.de is more aggressive on both counts: south to southwest, 170 to 263 metres, and 30 to 60 percent, over grey slate with a high stone fraction. Both readings can be true of different parts of a fifteen-hectare polygon; the honest summary is a warm, sheltered, moderately steep southwest tilt rather than one of the Saar's cliff-faced sites.
The upper boundary runs into woodland. The lower boundary meets the Herrenberger, which sits immediately downslope to the east and which the VDP classifies as an Erste Lage. The Ritterpfad, shared between Wawern and Kanzem, lies about 300 metres away; the Jesuitenberg is a little further. Wawern's named sites are therefore a tight cluster on one hillside, not a string along the river, and the Goldberg occupies the highest and best-drained part of it.
Who farms it now
Wawern has thinned out badly. German Wikipedia records only two full-time growers left in the village, with the larger parcels bought up by estates based elsewhere, and Carlberg notes Van Volxem replanting substantial stretches of Wawern's south-facing slopes.
Parcels within the Goldberg totalling 12.56 hectares are classified VDP.GROSSE LAGE for Riesling, and Van Volxem is the only VDP member estate listed on the site. That is a high proportion of the delimited ground, roughly four fifths, and a useful contrast with sites where the classified fraction is a tenth or less. Weingut Wwe. Strupp also appears in German listings as a Goldberg bottler. Van Volxem's own labelling has moved upward over time: a 2009 went out under the VDP.Erste Lage designation, while recent vintages are released as Grosses Gewächs.
The einzellage falls inside the Grosslage Scharzberg, the collective name that blankets the whole Saar. A bottle reading Wawerner Scharzberg is a blend from anywhere in that catchment and has no connection to this hill.
The wine
The commercial descriptions converge on a consistent register: ripe stone fruit, apricot and mirabelle, with a smoky and herbal edge, rather than the lime-and-wet-stone vocabulary that dominates writing on the cooler Saar sites upstream at Ockfen and Serrig. That is what a low-altitude southwest slope in a sheltered side valley should give. The site ripens readily, and the resulting wines carry more flesh and less needle than Saar Riesling's reputation implies, with the acid structure arriving as balance rather than as attack.