Kirchberg means church hill, and it recurs wherever a slope was parish property or endowed a parish. Classified Kirchbergs exist at Hatzenport on the Terrassenmosel, at Bingen, at Ilbesheim in the Pfalz and at Oberrotweil in Baden. None of them has anything to do with this one.
The delimited area is 11.39 hectares, a narrow north-south strip about 400 metres across and 680 metres long, with the small Liebfrauenberg immediately to the east and the Fels just north. Planted surface is a different and much smaller number, because delimitation records legal outline rather than vines.
The Schabberg, and a red wine footnote
What is documented about this site is mostly historical, and it comes largely from Lars Carlberg's work on the Prussian tax maps. The Gewann Im Schabberg lies within the Könener Kirchberg. It is steep, and it remains fallow, with bushes and trees standing on it. Clotten's editions of 1868 and 1890 record the parcel as Schaberg, shaded in the light red of Otto Beck's middle band, corresponding to Prussian tax classes three to five: respectable ground, not first rank. The 1906 edition appears to misprint the name.
The interesting part is what was planted there. Carlberg reports that the widow Julius Gensterblum offered bottle-aged Pinot Noir from the Schabberg and the Nonnenberg at the Trier auctions, including a Fuder of 1892 Schabberger Auslese, and that an 1898 wine congress account set these Könen reds alongside the Côte d'Or. F. W. Koch recorded that Spätburgunder grew only at Könen on this stretch of the Saar, cropping lightly but well. The red vines were pulled out in 1920.
Standing today
Könen still carried about 16 hectares of vines in 1970. By 2005 the worked surface had fallen to a few hectares. The Kirchberg was among the casualties, and no commercially available bottling under the site name is findable.
The VDP's register for the Saar contains no Kirchberg and lists no member estate at Könen. The classification flag attached to this polygon in WineSaint's data should therefore not be read as VDP standing; it reflects the collision of a very common vineyard name. The nearest classified ground is the Pulchen at Filzen, about a kilometre northeast, where 2.48 hectares are classified VDP.GROSSE LAGE and farmed by Weingut Piedmont.
The site belongs to the Grosslage Scharzberg, which covers the entire Saar and carries no quality information at all.