Does the world really need a new lifestyle magazine at this moment in time? If the magazine is created by someone who revolutionized the way wine is evaluated, the answer may be yes:

CAN A WINE EVER be perfect? If so, who is qualified to pass that judgment? Is it the winemaker who is trained in viticulture or oenology? The merchant with a fabled palate who buys the wines year after year? Or is it the critic, with no formal training but a strong sense of smell, a notebook and an ability to taste 10,000 wines a year?

In the early 1970s a young lawyer from Maryland named Robert M. Parker Jr. was convinced it was the last of these—and devised a system that set out to prove it.

“Some people made a big deal of it,” says Mr. Parker, now widely regarded as the world’s most influential wine critic. “I always said your best palate is your own, not mine. I’m a guidepost. While I like to try and think I bring consistency, and I think my palate is uniform, this is not a scientific system.”

The system looks at the color, bouquet and taste of a wine. By awarding a number of points for each category—five for the color, 15 for the bouquet and 20 for the palate and texture, on top of a base score of 50 that each wine starts with—he built a numerical scale that not only helped demystify wine for a generation of budding oenophiles but would go on to become the most powerful rating system in the world of wine.

“Originally we came up with 90 points,” says Mr. Parker. “But then I said we need a slush fund—I remember calling it a slush fund—of 10 points for how much the wine can improve and where it will go from here.” Bingo! The 100-point scale was born—an easy-to-understand scoring system that gave every wine a percentage score, or what would become known as “Parker Points.”

If consumers loved it, the old-school wine-writing fraternity loathed it. English writer Hugh Johnson described fundamental judgments on wine as “dangerous and misleading.” “Who would think of trying to rate Manet or Monet, or Hemingway and Fitzgerald?” he wrote in “Wine: A Life Uncorked.” Others found the mere act of putting a number to a wine baffling.

“People say ‘Well, you can’t possibly score the wine the same thing every time,’ ” says Mr. Parker. “And I say, of course I can’t. But I would like to think—and I have done enough blind tastings—that if I stay within two or three points, then I have a consistent palate.”

We’re sitting in London’s Hedonism. The Mayfair store has been described as a shrine to fine wine, boasting a wall of Château d’Yquem and a room dedicated to Penfolds. Mr. Parker is like a kid in a candy shop. With Bob Dylan playing in the background (customers can choose their own music), he marvels at how “upscale” it is and asks me to explain their Enomatic wine serving and preserving system.

It’s a preview night for the launch of 100 Points by Robert Parker. Published by Germany’s Hubert Burda Media in partnership with Mr. Parker’s 36-year-old newsletter the Wine Advocate, the new magazine is inspired by Mr. Parker’s rating system…

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