

They are what people in the Midwest like to drink. The reason Purple Toad concentrates on sweet wines is simple. Some wines also have a touch of natural flavoring. It’s real fruit, too, grown in Kentucky or imported from growing regions around the country. The flavors are unique, most incorporating fruit or fruit juices. Purple toad offers 43 wines, most of them semi-sweet, sweet and very sweet dessert wines.
BLACK AND BRUISED WINE PADUCAH FULL
Eventually, he quit his day job and moved into the wine-making business full time.

Even then, they couldn’t make it quickly enough. The first two years Dossey only sold Purple Toad wines on premises. We were here filling bottles until midnight that night, so we could open the next day. We only had about 25 cases bottled, and we sold all of it. We had a line out the door and into the parking lot, and we ran out of wine. “We hadn’t advertised, picked a weekday, thought it would be an easy slow day to learn everything. “We opened on a Wednesday in 2009,” said Allen Dossey.

Then stocks crashed in 2008, and they decided to invest in building a winery rather than invest in the market. They were slowly buying back some of June’s family lands near Paducah and decided to plant grapes to harvest and sell to other wineries. Allen worked in insurance and business, but a trip to Napa Valley about 20 years ago turned the couple’s minds to wine. June Dossey grew up in Paducah and Allen in Cave City, Kentucky. Purple Toad is the largest and most award-winning winery in Kentucky and is now available in five states with two more upcoming. The second time is because of the product.” That label sells the wine the first time somebody buys it. “The name Purple Toad comes from the time when people would stomp in the vats of grapes so they would have purple toes, and if you look at the frog on the label, it has purple toes. “I have biology teachers come in here and inform me that it is a frog on the label and not a toad,” he said. And yes, Dossey is perfectly aware the frog is not a toad. You’ve seen it - the one with the big Brazilian tree frog on the label. You’ll find Purple Toad wine at most of our local liquor and larger grocery stores.
