Turpan Raisins

Turpan is China's most celebrated grape region, long called the "home of grapes"; its raisins are made by hanging fresh grapes in special drying houses and air-drying them for forty-odd days in the dry hot wind, emerging emerald or amber, plump and cleanly sweet, the basin's most famous product.

The Turpan basin, with its fierce sun, huge day-night temperature swings and dry air, is a natural drying ground; locals invented the drying house whose walls are pierced with vents to air-dry the grapes rather than sun-bake them, preserving colour and flavour, a craft that gives Turpan raisins their jade-green hue and far-flung fame.

Raisins are eaten out of hand as a dried-fruit snack or woven into cooking—folded into polo, naan and pastries for sweetness, or steeped in milk tea and stirred into yogurt; at Uyghur weddings they are among the first things placed on the table with naan and sweets, a symbol of sweetness.

The emerald colour from shade-drying, the plump flesh and clean sweetness, and the cachet of coming from "grape country" are the unrepeatable marks of Turpan raisins.