Fourth Estate

Fourth Estate Wines is a tribute to our friends in the working press and an homage to our passion for fine wine. We choose fruit from intriguing vineyards, pick when flavor is at its peak and handcraft the wine in small lots using meticulous, artisanal methods. Our winemaking facility is located in Sebastopol, California, in the heart of the Russian River Valley. We can arrange tastings with advanced notice. Please contact us atinfo@fourthestatewinery.com. The term “Fourth Estate” refers to the press. First attributed to British statesman Edmund Burke in the 18th century, it has become a catch-all phrase that describes the press as a fourth branch of government. Our owner and manager, Tina Duff Taylor, a former reporter at the Wall Street Journal, comes from a family of reporters and writers, and we support the important work they do. For the 2008 vintage, our first, we made $1,000 donations to both the Daniel Pearl Foundation and the James Mark Pittman scholarship program for investigative journalism at the University of Kansas. Tina Taylor’s colleague, Danny Pearl of the Wall Street Journal, was killed in Pakistan while reporting a story about terrorist networks there. Mark Pittman of Bloomberg News did some of the most important work on the financial crisis of 2008 before dying of a heart-related ailment, and KU was his alma mater. Since 2008, we’ve supported Ronald McDonald House Charities in Omaha, Nebraska, through donations to the VinNebraska charitable wine event. Since 2009, we’ve supported the Big Brothers/Big Sisters organization of San Francisco. Since 2012, we’ve supported Youth Frontiers, an Omaha non-profit that promotes dynamic retreat programs in schools to focus on building character values such as kindness, courage, respect and responsibility. In future years, we’ll continue to support worthy causes such as these and let you know how we’re deploying our charitable resources. As many of our friends know, there is also a Nebraska connection to this wine. Tina was born and raised in Omaha, which is shaping up as one of our most important markets. Although we live and produce our wine in northern California, we’ll continue to make regular visits to the great city of Omaha and share the wine with our family and many friends there.