Rene Barbier is the winemaker behind Clos Mogador and it is he who has conferred worldwide recognition to Priorat. He has enabled this region on the wild hills above Tarragona (near the northeast coast of Spain) to become one of the most prestigious vineyards in Spain.
Thanks to this Frenchman (originally from the Cotes-du-Rhone), who settled here in the 1980s, Priorat has now become one of the country’s most renowned wine regions. Housed in an old property that he bought at Gratallops, he created his own vineyard in this region known for its shale land. About 15 years ago, this village comprised of around one hundred inhabitants, now there are more than a thousand.
Rene Barbier studied in Burgundy, then at the University of Bordeaux before numerous stints across France, notably at Chateau Petrus! In 1989, he harvested his first grapes, which came after ten years of hard work - during which he combined his work selling wine during the week with his passion of developing his vineyards and building his house on the weekends. In order to produce the best wine, Barbier employs new technologies while also building and maintaining his diverse wine knowledge. Attention to detail is taken to the extreme with his estate, promoting biodiversity by planting fruit trees, almond trees, olive trees and flowers between the vines. During harvest, he determines the exact timing for pruning each plant. Even better the harvested grapes are sorted by hand, one by one, before moving them into a vertical manual press, more than a century old that was recovered from an old cellar!
