The wine industry saw a brief decline in the 17th century as politics and religious propaganda did little to promote the drinking of wine for pleasure. Wine also had to face the new rival of a clean and readily available supply of drinking water so it was no-longer needed as a major part of the daily diet. Despite all of this, many new developments helped the wine industry keep its popularity, such as the invention of better glass making, the cork and other accessories, as well as better methods of production.
   Wine went through several changes during the 18th century. England witnessed many of these due to its political relations with France. But because of the strained relations with France, the English were without a major source of wine and had to look elsewhere for their drink. They turned to Portugal, Holland, and South Africa for their wine.
   However the French wine industry soared in the 18th century. Many people feel that this was when the wines of Bordeaux really began to flourish. The merchants who frequented the Bordeaux region came from Holland, Germany, Ireland and even Scandinavia. As a result, Bordeaux was able to successfully trade wine for coffee and other much sought after items from the New World, which helped cement the role of wine in the growing industry of world trade.
   but some very bad times were ahead for European wine makers because, inadvertently introduced to Europe in 1860 on imported North American vine stocks, Phylloxera (a pest of commercial grapevines related to the aphid) wiped out a significant portion of European wine grapes up until the 1900s.
   Phylloxera is actually native to America and the native grape species there are at least partially resistant. The European wine grape Vitis vinifera is very susceptible, so when the pest was introduced to Europe it devastated the wine growing industry. In France, some grape growers were so desperate that they buried a toad under each vine. There was a glimmer of hope in that areas with sandy soils were spared, and the spread was slowed in dry climates, but gradually the aphid was everywhere.
   A huge amount of research was devoted to finding a solution to the phylloxera problem, and two major solutions gradually emerged: hybridization and resistant rootstocks.
   Hybridization was the breeding of Vitis vinifera with resistant species. Native American grapes are naturally phylloxera resistant but produced wine that did not taste like the native European grape. Also, these hybrids were not that good at resisting Phylloxera and for those two reasons are hardly used today.
   Use of a resistant rootstock involves grafting a Vitis vinifera scion onto the roots of a resistant Vitis labrusca or other American native species. This is the preferred method today, because the rootstock does not interfere with the development of the wine grapes and the flavor of the grapes remains intact, while the vine is more resistant to Phylloxera.