Robert Mondavi, the pioneering Napa Valley vintner whose drive and salesmanship revolutionized the way the world thought about California wine, died Friday at his Yountville, Calif., home, a spokeswoman for the Robert Mondavi Winery said. He was 94.

The son of an Italian-born grape wholesaler from California's Central Valley, Mondavi was, at the end of his life, one of the best-known figures in American viticulture, with a name that was almost synonymous with California wine.

His cabernets and chardonnays have been served at the White House and sold by the glass at Disney theme parks. His Cain-and-Abel exile from his family business after a fistfight with his brother was the source of legend.

His Mission-style winery in Oakville is a landmark and wine label icon. Though he had little formal training in winemaking, he is credited with the invention of fume blanc during the 1960s and with popularizing chardonnay, in the words of the Wine Spectator, "as the great California white."

When Chateau Mouton-Rothschild of Bordeaux approached him about a Franco-American collaboration —- the equivalent, in the words of wine industry consultant Vic Motto of "Goliath coming to David to learn how to throw stones" —- the resulting Opus One Cabernet Sauvignon not only sold for a then-unprecedented $50 a bottle, but validated his vision for the industry.

Like most salesmen, he understood the power of a good story, and he liked to tell his. He spoke freely and frequently with reporters, historians and biographers and, in 1998, published "Harvests of Joy: How the Good Life Became Great Business," his autobiography.

Rivals occasionally resented his innate gift for public relations. Some complained that he took too much credit for shaping the industry and the Napa Valley. Others contended that he took too little blame for the elitism and commercialism that eventually vexed both, and snidely nicknamed his Opus One winery "O Pious One."

For all this, Robert Mondavi was viewed as a powerful ambassador for wine and California, and he was recognized worldwide, even after the family lost controlling interest in the winery after a 2004 sale to Constellation Brands.

"He has probably been the most important figure in the wine industry in the last half of this century," Paul Gillette, then-publisher of the Wine Investor newsletter, told The New York Times in 1990.