Robert M. Parker Jr. is a leading U.S. wine critic with an international influence. His wine ratings on a 100-point scale and his newsletter The Wine Advocate, with his particular stylistic preferences and notetaking vocabulary, have become very influential in American wine buying and are therefore a major factor in setting the prices for newly released Bordeaux wines. Despite controversy surrounding his reviews and scores, he continues to be the most widely-known wine critic in the world today. Parker was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He is an honors graduate of the University of Maryland,... College Park, with a major in history and a minor in art history. He continued his education at University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore, graduating in 1973 with a Juris Doctor degree. For over ten years, he was an attorney for the Farm Credit Banks of Baltimore; he resigned in March 1984 to devote his full attention to writing about wine. In 1975, Parker began writing a wine guidebook.
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