Vineyards

In the ancient world the wine press was a large basin where men would tread grapes. They would hold on to ropes above them and stamp their feet.......

In the ancient world the wine press was a large basin where men would tread grapes. They would hold on to ropes above them and stamp their feet. The juice would run into containers on the sides of the large basin. In the above illustration a woman is seen bringing more grapes in a basket.

The winepress of Isaiah's parable was constructed by hewing it out of rock (Isaiah 5:2). Those seen today are composed of two depressions hewn out of solid rock. The one is higher than the other one, and is also larger. The grapes are put into this one, and then trodden by the feet of men, women, and also children, usually whole families working together. The juice flows into the lower depression. Usually each vineyard of any size has its own winepress.

This work of treading the grapes was customarily accompanied by shouts and songs of happiness. Jeremiah speaks of judgment in terms of the absence of this happiness. "And joy and gladness is taken from the plentiful field, and from the land of Moab; and I have caused wine to fail from the winepresses: none shall tread with shouting; their shouting shall be no shouting" (Jeremiah 48:33).

"Harvesting was done by cutting clusters of grapes from the vine with pruning knives. Then the grapes were placed in baskets and carried o the winepress, ordinarily situated within the vineyard but sometimes in the city. Winepresses were hewn from bedrock to form a flat surface for treading. They consisted of a pair of square or circular vats (called gat and yeqeb in Hebrew) arranged at different levels and connected by a channel.

The grapes were trodden by bare feet in the treading platform (gat), which was higher and larger than the deeper yeqeb, the receptacle into which the new wine flowed from the press...... After the grapes were treaded, the expressed juice ran into vats carved in the bedrock or constructed and lined with plaster. The juice collected in these vats was then set in a cool place for fermentation"

In the ancient Egyptian the wine press was a large basin where men would tread grapes. They would hold on to ropes above them and stamp their feet. The juice would run into containers on the sides of the large basin.

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