People toast and taste wine on the veranda at the Vino Godfather winery on Mare Island in Vallejo, California.[Photo/Agencies]

Looking for a taste of this city's rich military history? You'll find it, along with some rather good wine, at one of several wineries set up in former military installations.

The Armed Forces may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you picture San Francisco, but before it was a tech capital, before it was a hippie heaven, this was a military town surrounded by several bases set in the region.

Downsizing and consolidation led to a wave of base closures in the 1990s, which, after some tidying up, created a number of interesting spaces that have been turned into parks, sound stages, offices and other commercial applications, and, in what may be the tastiest development, settings for urban tasting rooms.

Here are a few places that have made the transition from battle-ready to bottle-ready.