René Barbier III was descended from a French winemaking family but was born and raised in Catalonia. He studied enology in Bordeaux, Burgundy and Limoux, and worked at the Moueix house (producers of Pétrus) in Pomerol before returning to Spain. He discovered Priorat's abandoned terraced vineyards in 1979 and saw potential in a region everyone else had given up on. Together with Alvaro Palacios, Carles Pastrana, José Luis Pérez and Daphne Glorian, he led what is now called the Priorat Revolution. The winery is named after a novel by his great-aunt Elisabeth Barbier, "Les Gens de Mogador," which chronicles a family from near Avignon on an imaginary estate called Mogador. His son René IV now works alongside him.