After Prohibition in the United States, Ives was a popular grape used in the production of sweet, port-style wines but saw its plantings steadily decrease throughout the 20th century as the vine's susceptibility to air pollution took its toll.

Employing an extensive set of microsatellite DNA markers, de Oliveira's research group in São Paulo, Brazil, revealed in a 2020 publication, that the Bordô hybrid cultivar (a.k.a.

Dr. Jeronimo (Jerry) Rodrigues (South Africa) further analysed Ives' microsatellite DNA which can now be downloaded from the Vitis International Variety Catalogue (VIVC) database (Maul and Röckel, 2015).

However, by the end of the 20th century, plantings of the grape were declining significantly as the toll of air pollution in the United States resulted in crop failure for the sensitive vine.

When not grafted to more vigorous rootstock, Ives noir tend to produce a shallow and weak root system that also makes the vine very susceptible to water stress which may require irrigation in drought conditions.