(TDB) - While many viticultural changes are taking place within Chile to improve the quality of its grapes, such a replanting on rootstocks, using improved clones, reproducing old vine material and managing vineyards for a better sugar-acidity balance in the berries, it is the planting of increasingly extreme locations that is the most remarkable development.

It seems producers are obsessed with one-upmanship, attempting to find the highest, driest or most southerly vineyard in the world. Thankfully, Chile provides a suitable playground: home to the longest continental mountain range on earth, and the planet’s driest non-polar desert.

One of the world’s most extreme vineyards, and Chile’s most northerly, is a cooperative project deep within the Atacama. Employing respected oenology professor at the Universidad de Chile, Alvaro Peña, and terroir specialist Pedro Parra, the project is high profile in Chile, but the wine from it, called Ayllu, is sold locally (primarily to tourists) since its launch with the 2010 vintage.

But the Atacama has also attracted the interest of one of Chile’s biggest producers, Viña Ventisquero. The company planted Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Syrah, Viognier, Merlot and Pinot Noir in 2007 in a southern part of the Atacama Desert called Huasco, and has produced around 1,000 bottles from each variety from the 2011 vintage under the Tara label.

According to chief winemaker Felipe Tosso, the area is a cool climate due to the altitude, and points out that it benefits from limestone soils as well as the nearby Huasco river. Indeed, he describes the vineyard as a small oasis, though admits that the water is problematically salty.