Perhaps American colonists were so struck by the sharp smell of
ripe labrusca that they came to identify these particular grapes
with the familiar fable. They were foxy. At the very least,
Wikipedia, the gold standard of references, gives us this
comment by Marianne Moore on the fox deciding that the
unattainable grapes were sour after all, " "Better, I think,
than an embittered whine".can be smelled tens of yards away from
the vine. Paul Winalski wrote:BTW, that character is even more
overpowering in the wild V. labrusca grapes, which aren't really
particularly good eating. Regarding the origin of the term fox
for the grape did you read the appendix to the book a quoted -
it's online here http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpresseboo ...
and=eschol “One theory may, I think, be dismissed as purely
fanciful: this is the notion that "fox grape" alludes to Aesop's
fable of the fox and the grapes; on this account, the grape is
named after the grapes that the fox in the fable could not reach
and therefore called sour” (