Jim and Susie, along with Jim’s father John, opened Butler Winery in downtown Bloomington on North College Avenue in 1983. Then, and still today, the guiding principle of the business was the vision of making the highest quality wines from grapes grown in Indiana. They planted their first grapes of their own on their Robinson Road property in 1992 and moved all the wine production to that location in 1999. Since then, they have steadily increased plantings and production, always with a quality-first mindset.

In 2006 Jim petitioned the Federal government to designate the unglaciated portion of South Central Indiana as an American Viticultural Area (AVA) called the “Indiana Uplands”. The petition was approved in 2013.

The downtown Bloomington location (1022 N. College Ave.) still serves as a satellite tasting room selling wines produced at the vineyard, as well as being one of Indiana’s largest suppliers of home beer and winemaking supplies.