Our Story
1998: A Trip to Napa
From Golf to Grapes
Allen was a scratch golfer who played on area teams for years, until shoulder and elbow surgeries took the game away. June and Allen have never been ones to sit still. Remembering Napa, they planted 2,500 grapevines in a long, narrow field on their property where the family used to hit golf balls: Chardonnay, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, and Riesling.
Learning the Craft
Allen had sold insurance since 1994 and did not plan to do it forever. He spent a year studying winemaking from books and online, and he had been making his own wine since the vines went in. Five-gallon batches and plenty of taste testing decided which wines we would pour first.
2008: Built by Hand
A winery cannot be licensed until its building is finished and ready for inspection, so construction began in the summer of 2008. With the help of June’s family, especially her brother Gerald Neihoff, the Dosseys and Neihoffs poured the concrete, framed the walls, set the trusses, and finished the interior themselves.
300 Front Doors
July 1, 2009: Opening Day
We opened on a Wednesday morning at 10:30, on Allen’s birthday, and did not expect much of a crowd. Fifty people were waiting outside. Sales were strong enough that the family bottled wine until midnight to restock. Soon we were selling hundreds of bottles a week. The long shot had worked.
Purple Toad Today
In 2018 we opened a 20,000-square-foot production building. Our distillery followed in 2024, and our Bowling Green tasting room opened in 2026.
Today Purple Toad is the largest winery in Kentucky and the only winery in Paducah, making about 60,000 cases a year. Our wines are in hundreds of grocery and liquor stores across eight states. Steven, the son on that Napa trip, is now our general manager and winemaker, and we are still family owned and operated.
Where Our Fruit Comes From
That field is where it all started. After 25 years the original vines had grown old, and we pulled them out. Today our fruit comes from growers around the country, and we crush and press fresh grapes here in Paducah. We also grow an acre of Marquette, planted in 2023, for our Marquette Rosé.