When I was eight years old, my family moved from the sheltered suburbs of Long Island, New York, to the wilds of the Pocono Mountains in Pennsyl-vania. At first I was cautious of this new environment, but within a year I had made so many wonderful discoveries that I was as at home in the woods and fields, along the creeks and swamps, and on the rocky cliffs as I ever was on the shores of Manhas-set Bay. One discovery in particular thrilled me. Walking along a dirt road on a warm and sunny Septem-ber day, I smelled a strong, fruity scent—sort of like Welch’s grape jelly. I followed my nose and soon discovered long vines climbing up the roadside trees; among the branches hung bunches of big black grapes.
Soon I was up among the branches too, tasting them. They had a strong acidic juice, very aromatic, very fruity. The skins slipped easily off the pulp inside, which contained a number of seeds. It wasn’t long before my tongue got educated in the art of separating the seeds from the pulp. I’d pop a handful of grapes in my mouth, bite them open, get the skins onto my back teeth on the left side and chew them for their concentrated flavor, spit them out, work the pulp to remove the seeds, spit out the seeds, and chew the pulp like squishy gum, drinking the sweet juice as it came free. These vines were Vitis labrusca, the wild grapes of the northeastern states, which announce their presence to your nose many yards before you even see them. If you’ve ever tasted a Concord grape, you’ve tasted a choice variation of labrusca that was discovered in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1849. The peculiar flavor of wild labrusca and Concord is sometimes called “foxy.”
Down South, you’re likely to run into wild grapes, too, but they will be the muscadine grape, Vitis rotundifolia, the best-known type of which is called Scuppernong, although there are many named cultivated varieties used for fresh eating and wine making. With a color ranging from greenish bronze to black, these grapes have a coarser flavor than Vitis labrusca-type grapes and make inferior wine. However, their hardy vines stand up to the many difficult diseases that afflict vines from the southern parts of the country.
In the northern Midwest, there is a small wild grape, Vitis riparia, that grows along streams and in wetlands. And out in California, wild Vitis californica grows in the coastal woodlands.
All of these grapes are edible, but only labrusca has the ability to project its strong fruity aroma for a hundred yards around itself. Edible is not the same as palatable, however. Among the wild species, labrusca comes closest to true palatability.
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