Veteran Washington winemaker and Stillwater Creek Vineyard consultant Mike Januik predicts 2002 will rank as one of Washington’s best vintages in the last 20 years, “certainly among the top four of the last 19 vintages I’ve experienced in the Columbia Valley,” says Januik. At Stillwater Creek, we harvested our first grapes from third-leaf vines with impressive results. Summer temperatures were consistently warm without getting too hot; fall was ideal – no rain, just nice warm fall days and cool nights that extended hang time and finished the grapes off perfectly. Cropped for low yields – about one ton per acre – coupled with outstanding growing conditions, the vineyard produced deeply-colored, concentrated wines.