When Crushpad, the Bay Area’s DIY winery, decided this past spring to exchange the gray streets of Dogpatch for the verdant hillsides of Napa, it seemed like a serious blow. After all, Crushpad helped dozens of small winemakers, both commercial and amateur, make 700 barrels (around 17,500 cases) of juice last year. But despite the departure, accessible urban winemaking is actually more robust than ever. For proof, look no further than the East Bay Vintner’s Alliance, an association of 21 producers stretching from the northern reaches of Berkeley down through Oakland and into Alameda.

Urban winemaking has the same sort of authentic, rebellious glow that garage rock enjoys over studio productions. There’s an undeniable attraction to the idea that in some industrial park in West Oakland, between a plumbing parts supplier and an auto-body shop, you might find a nondescript warehouse filled with barrels of red. The phenomenon of the urban winery is growing in Seattle, Portland, and even Manhattan, but nowhere does it thrive like it does in the East Bay. The Alliance, which will host its annual Urban Wine Experience tasting at Oakland’s Jack London Pavilion on July 31, has more than doubled in size over the past five years—it may be the nation’s largest metropolitan winemaking association.

“It punctures the myth that an extraordinary amount of discretionary income and capital are needed to start a winery,” says Sasha Verhage, of Eno Wines, who has been working out of a shared facility in North Berkeley since 1999. “I think a lot of people’s passion can come to fruition here in an urban environment.” Indeed, alongside small win­eries such as Verhage’s, you can find larger, more famous outfits, including Rosenblum Cellars, in Alameda, and JC Cellars and Dashe Cellars, which share a large warehouse space in Oakland.

Urban areas may lack pastoral beauty, but bringing grapes from elsewhere to make wine in a city has its advantages. “It makes sense to locate a winery where your customers are,” says Steve Shaffer, who, along with his wife, Marilee, owns Oakland’s Urban Legend Cellars. “People don’t need to brave weekend traffic in Napa or Sonoma to taste great wine. They can do it here in their own town, and they can develop relationships with us winemakers.”

The setting offers benefits to winemakers, too. “Originally, we started thinking about buying a vineyard or planting one in Amador County,” Shaffer says, “and finally came to the conclusion that, yes, it’s beautiful and it’s bucolic. But it’s also boring.” And wineries with urban zip codes escape from being stereotyped by the style of a single growing region.

Like an interesting city, the Alliance is compel­ling for its diversity. At one of its tastings, you’ll get everything from Irish Monkey Cellars’ rather obscure touriga nacional and tannat to the interesting red blends (cabernet franc and syrah, for example) from Periscope Cellars to a persimmon dessert wine crafted by Adams Point Winery.

Many urban producers cite their proximity to the vibrant Oakland dining scene as a boon to sales and to the gastronomic ideal of locavorism. How great would it be to see these pioneers supply wines on tap at local restaurants and to city shops for bulk sales? Maybe it’ll happen eventually. In the meantime, it’s a pleasure to know that behind the scratched steel door at the end of the block or in the faded ware­house around the corner, the miracle of fermentation just might be turning grapes into wine.

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Jordan Mackay is San Francisco’s wine and spirits writer.