Daily Inspiration Quote by Robert M. Parker, Jr.

"I'm an anti-industrial kind of guy" is Parker in pocket-sized form: a blunt declaration of taste masquerading as ideology, and an ideology that just happens to map neatly onto taste. Coming from America’s most influential wine critic, the line isn’t a manifesto against factories so much as a warning label against sameness. Parker built his authority in an era when wine was becoming globalized, scaled up, and engineered for consistency. His palate, and the culture that sprang up around it, helped decide what counted as "quality" just as modern winemaking was learning how to manufacture it.

The intent is positioning. Parker signals allegiance to the romance of craft: small producers, idiosyncratic vineyards, wines that taste like a place rather than a focus group. "Anti-industrial" reads as a moral stance, but it’s also consumer guidance: avoid the brands that can be replicated anywhere, any year. The subtext is that industrial methods aren’t merely efficient; they’re corrupting, sanding off the rough edges that make a bottle worth arguing about.

There’s a sly irony, too. Parker’s own influence arguably accelerated the very industrialization he disavows. Scores created incentives; incentives create standardization. When a critic becomes a market force, even the anti-industrial gesture can turn into a style brief. The line works because it’s both authentic and defensive: a preemptive answer to the charge that modern wine tastes too designed, and a reminder that "authenticity" is often the most lucrative flavor on the shelf.