Robert Mondavi, a pioneering vintner who helped establish California's wine country, died at his Napa Valley home Friday. He was 94.

According to his spokesperson, Mondavi died peacefully at his home in Yountville, Robert Mondavi Winery.

In 1966, when he was 52 years old, Mondavi opened the winery that helped turn the Napa Valley into a world center of the wine industry.

Born in Virginia, Minn., Mondavi got an economics degree from Stanford University in the 1930s and went to work at the Charles Krug Winery, which his Italian-born parents had bought after moving to California from Minnesota.