Robert M. Parker Jr.

Robert McDowell Parker Jr. (born July 23, 1947, in Baltimore, Maryland) is an American wine critic and the founder of The Wine Advocate, the publication that helped popularize the 100-point wine rating scale. He studied history and art history at the University of Maryland and earned a Juris Doctor there in 1973 before practicing law for more than a decade. He resigned in 1984 from his legal post at the Farm Credit Banks of Baltimore to focus full-time on wine writing, later retiring from Robert Parker Wine Advocate in 2019.