A wrinkled red fruit in the hand
In Zhongning County, dried wolfberry in the hand is oval or spindle-shaped, slightly flat, and wrinkled—bright red, dark red, purple-red, or jujube red, the flesh thick and soft. Ningxia local standard DB64/T 1640-2019 defines Zhongning wolfberry dried fruit as ripe Lycium barbarum grown in Zhongning and dried in the open air, by hot air, or by freeze-drying; its grades call the shape spindle-like, slightly flat, and slightly wrinkled, the colour bright red, purple-red, or jujube red, with the smell and taste the fruit ought to have.
Chew a berry from the county: red, wrinkled, faintly scented, sweet and slightly sour. Larger fruit runs spindle-like, pointed at both ends, sometimes glossy with irregular wrinkles. Sizes run from about 6 to 18 millimetres long and 6 to 8 millimetres across, with a style scar at one end, a stem scar at the other, and 25 to 50 seeds inside soft flesh. One wording stops at sweet and slightly sour; another on the same geographical-indication text adds a slightly bitter aftertaste. The mouth may hold only the first; the label may insist on the second—both stay.
A name registered to one county
The berries belong to Zhongning County, a county of the prefecture-level city of Zhongwei. From 10 January 2017, under Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs Announcement No. 2486, “Zhongning wolfberry” has been registered for agricultural-product geographical-indication protection. The certificate is long-term. The holder named in the county use rule is the Zhongning County Wolfberry Industry Development Service Centre.
The protected area in that rule is 20,000 hectares, between 105°16′04″ and 106°04′11″ east and 36°54′09″ and 37°44′19″ north. It covers six towns and six townships: Ning’an, Enhe, Mingsha, Xinbao, Dazhanchang, and Shikong towns, and Zhouta, Yuding, Baima, Hanjiaoshui, Xutao, and Taiyangliang townships. An older name, Ning’an wolfberry, belongs to Ning’anbu in Zhongning, on alluvial soils of the Qingshui River and the Yellow River. Yellow River irrigation is given as the geographic reason for the crop. “Zhongning wolfberry” is also a geographical-indication certification trademark. Zhongning’s third-batch county list of representative intangible-heritage items includes the traditional drying of fresh wolfberry fruit, under traditional craft.
Spread on a bamboo curtain
After dewaxing, the fresh fruit is spread 2 to 3 centimetres deep on a bamboo curtain over a wooden frame about 1.8 to 2 metres by 0.9 to 1 metre. In hot weather it stays about 4 to 5 days; in cool weather, 7 to 10. Hot-air drying and solar dryers sit beside the open-air frame in the standard, and freeze-drying is named there too. Summer fruit is picked from the middle and later part of July; autumn fruit, into the middle of October.
A 2021 county plan pushes clean-energy dryers and a gradual exit from open-air drying, while the geographical indication and the county craft list still describe the bamboo frame in the yard. Plans point toward machines; many courtyards may still spread red fruit a few centimetres deep on a curtain, in the county registered on 10 January 2017 under Announcement No. 2486.