Urban wineries are starting to pop up all over the country. In a trend that’s reminiscent of the craft beer brewing trend of the 80’s, urban wineries allow vintners to set up tasting rooms in urban centers without having to pay the high price for land in wine country. Usually they’ll rent an urban space, truck in the grapes from regional vineyards and then ferment and cellar the wine on the premises.

Representing this trend in the East San Francisco Bay area is the East Bay Vintner’s Alliance, a collection of twenty urban wineries spanning from Alameda to North Berkeley. Their headquarters are in Oakland and they source their grapes from Oregon, Southern California and even as far away as the Rhone Valley in France. Their mission is to create awareness in the East Bay that they are the best local source for purchasing local wine and to create excitement about the growing trend of urban wineries.
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