The tiny country of Georgia, its rural hills covered in vineyards, lies squeezed between Russia to the north and Turkey and Armenia to the south. Georgians will tell you that wine was invented in Georgia, and they’ll point to numerous archeological excavations as evidence.

One such archeological site is the Ikalto Monastery in eastern Georgia. Founded in the Sixth Century and destroyed by Persian invaders in the 1600’s, the monastery included three churches and a prestigious academy.

Being set in a vineyard-rich country, one course at the academy was in the practical art of wine-making. Here you see the wine press, a trough that was filled with grapes that were crushed with the bare feet of the monastery community.

The juice was then poured into large clay casks such as these for fermentation.

The casks were buried in the ground, where the juice was transformed into wine.

What you have seen so far are the ruins of a monastery, but the three churches remain intact, and one of them is the Church of the Trinity.

Inside the church is an icon that brings the educational enterprise and the spiritual work of the monastery together. It’s a modern icon, probably a replica of an early original.

The somber Virgin holds a cluster of grapes in one hand and the Holy Child in the other, and she looks as though she has just heard the prophecy of Simeon in the temple (Luke 2: 34, 35) and knows that sorrow awaits her.

Imagine students worshipping at the church and seeing the Virgin holding the grapes. Their day’s work of crushing the blood-red juice from grapes took on new meaning, for now a cluster of grapes - just like the ones they had  been crushing - reminds the infant Jesus that He came to be “crushed for our iniquities"and to be buried not only, but that He would rise and would give us His life-giving blood in the Eucharistic wine.