Past Faculty & Staff

Past Faculty & Staff

Bruce Bordelon

Bruce Bordelon

Emeritus Professor of Viticulture

Specializing in viticulture (growing grapes), he provides expertise about:

  • Establishing and designing vineyards
  • Managing vineyards
  • Identifying and managing pests
  • Evaluating new grape varieties
  • Advising about equipment and supplies
  • On-site visitations
Ellen Butz (Harkness)

Ellen Butz (Harkness)

Ellen Butz (Harkness) has worked with the wine industry in the Eastern United States since 1979. She is a microbiologist who spent most of her career working with the yeast and bacteria involved in wine production and teaching winemakers the fine art of pleasing the microbes—thus making fine wines. She recently retired from Purdue University after 15 years as Enology Specialist for the Indiana wine industry. In 2007, she and Dr. Richard Vine established Vintage Winery Consultants to help new and established wineries determine their analytical and quality control needs, assemble the equipment, and train winemakers to be proficient QC managers. In 2010 she was awarded the American Society for Enology and Viticulture Merit Award. In her spare time Ellie makes "non-commercial" wines, grows grapes and teaches others to love the art of the vine.
Richard Vine

Richard Vine

Emeritus Professor of Enology

Richard Vine was born and raised in the Finger Lakes Region of upstate New York. As a teenager, he worked with his grandfather making vineyard trellis posts. After a hitch in the U.S. Navy he returned home in 1958 and began his winemaking career at the Pleasant Valley Wine Company (Great Western) in Hammondsport. First a cellar worker and then a laboratory technician, he spent evenings earning a science degree at nearby Corning Community College. In 1965 Vine was promoted to winemaker and assumed responsibility for more than six million bottles of annual wine production. In 1973 he became Vice President of Production at Warner Vineyards in Michigan. Four years later he accepted a research position at Mississippi State University where he earned his bachelor's and doctorate degrees and wrote the first of four academic wine books.

Richard Vine came to Purdue in 1991 to fill their initial professor of enology position, and retired in 2004. He was well-known as the instructor of Purdue's wine appreciation course (FS 470). In 1999 Purdue dedicated a wine library in his name at the Nelson Hall of Food Science. He also was the wine consultant for American Airlines for 21 years. In 2007, he and Ellen Butz (Harkness) established Vintage Winery Consultants to help new and established wineries determine their analytical and quality control needs, assemble the equipment, and train winemakers to be proficient QC managers.

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