The grapes have long been crushed and the vines are settling into dormancy, but there is another harvest happening all over the North Coast that, like the 2012 grape vintage, is both more bountiful and of better quality than the area has seen in years.

From his gallery perched above Saint Helena’s Main Street, Christopher Hill has been bringing international artists to–and highlighting internationally acclaimed artists with strong local roots in–the Napa Valley for over a decade. He is celebrating his ten-year anniversary this fall by looking to Sonoma. On November 1st, the doors at 326 Healdsburg Avenue opened on Hill’s third location (he also has a gallery in his native home of Austria).

As the race to harvest — before the wet, cool fall weather settles into the wine countries of Northern California — continues, another kind of race is happening over in the winery. Fermentation, which tends to take its own sweet time, is being coaxed along by winemakers eager to make room in crowded tanks for those last tons of fruit. As the red wine finishes fermenting, it is pressed off the skins and pumped into barrels where it will spend the next months and maybe even years of its life.