The grapes were made wine and raisins. Grapes were eaten also as such. For the crushing of grapes a wine press was needed, which was hacked from rock (usually) where there were two cisterns.  This wine press could also be buried in the ground or bricked up. In this wine press were two cisterns, one was on top, which was deep and wide.  The other cistern was below that, and was deep and narrow.  Wine and oil were not produced by hand, because they were too hard to be crushed by hand, but trampling on them with the feet did it. This was carried out in the higher and wider cistern.  Here trampling on them crushed the olives and grapes.  There was a hole in the bottom of the cistern from which juices and oils poured down to the lower cistern.

The wine press announces the message to the believers and this is a powerful example of the transformation of this believer into the image of God.  The upper cistern describes how the proud human heart must be broken in much the same way as the trampled grapes were. The grape juice poured from the upper to the lower cistern; it came down from a height!  When our flesh is broken, we begin to change so that Jesus (Yeshua) the Messiah is formed in us.  The message of the wine press is a powerful one: that I must decrease and  (Yeshua) the Messiah must increase in me, John 3:30.