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82 WINES&VINES April 2018 WINE INDUSTRY NEWS WINE EAST L ancaster, Pa.–In spite of a nor'easter moving up the Atlantic coast, a near-re- cord breaking crowd of more than 1,060 people attended the seventh Eastern Winery Exposition (EWE) at the Convention Center in Lan- caster, Pa., on March 6-8. At the industry celebration dinner the conference presented its Lifetime Achievement Award to Ellie Butz, a microbiologist in Indiana who for almost four decades has helped many winemakers across the East improve the quality of their wines. According to Butz, she was first hired in 1979 by Dr. Robert Beel- man, now professor emeritus of food science at Penn State Univer- sity. He had isolated a malolactic bacteria known as PSU-1 and then obtained a contract with Tri Bio Laboratories in State College, Pa., to turn it into a commercial prod- uct for use by the wine industry. Although Butz knew little about wine at that time, she became the lab's wine products manager. Philip Wagner, a grape nurs- ery and winery owner in Mary- land, was convinced that the Eastern wine industry needed an analytical laboratory for wine. With Wagner's encouragement, Butz started the Eastern Wine Analysis Laboratory with the ini- tial support of 15 wineries. Meanwhile, Butz took Beel- man's wine education course and learned how to do the tests needed by winemakers. She made ar- rangements to sell PSU-1 through Scott Laboratories and Lallemand, and in the process, Steve Scott from Scott Labs and Clayton Cone from Lallemand also became Butz' mentors in microbiology and labo- ratory procedures. Butz' husband found a teaching position at Mississippi State Uni- versity, and in 1984 the Butz family left Pennsylvania. Dr. Richard Vine had recently moved to MSU to run the university's new enology pro- gram, and he hired Butz to make research wines and conduct wine analyses. In 1991 the enology pro- gram at MSU closed, and Vine was hired to start a similar program at Purdue University in Indiana. The following year, Butz joined Vine at Purdue to conduct lab analyses and teach students labo- ratory procedures. In the next 15 years, she and Vine grew the Indy International Wine Competition to be the largest in the country. As part of her wine education, Butz joined the Eastern Section of the American Society for Enol- ogy and Viticulture in the mid- 1980s and then served on its board of directors for 22 years. In 2019, she received the merit award from ASEV-ES. After retiring from Purdue in 2007, Butz became a principal in Vintage Winery Consultants with Vine and continued her work with wineries throughout the East. She now works on a part-time basis as a representative for Lallemand at wine industry trade shows across the East and in California. —Linda Jones McKee Wine East Covering Eastern North America Microbiologist Honored by Eastern Winery Exposition EASTERN WINE LABS Serving the Analytical needs of East Coast Wineries WWW.EASTERNWINELABS.COM Ph 609-859-4302 Cell 609-668-2854 chemist@easternwinelabs.com AOAC Member - B E C O PA D - Y E A S T & E N Z Y M E S - C R U S H PA D E Q U I P M E N T - S T E R I L E F I LT R AT I O N - W I N E R Y H O S E - O A K A LT E R N AT I V E S SELL TO MORE GROWERS The Wines & Vines Grower Online Marketing System (GOMS) enables users to create and save highly customized grower searches, and export results into advanced report types, data exports and mailing labels. (866) 453-9701 • winesandvines.com/OMS SELECT RECORDS BASED ON: SELECT RECORDS BASED ON: region varietals acreage grape sales new vineyard Over four decades Ellie Butz helped winemakers across the East improve their wines. VANZ ANDBERGEN PHOTOGRAPHY