Despite powerful religious influences, Turkey has been building a wine culture at a rapid pace over the last few years. Turkey has always had a one of the worlds largest areas of vineyard, however only a very small proportion of the grapes were made into wine. The rest of these grapes were either eaten when fresh or they were dried to make the countrys aniseed flavoured spirit. As of recent, the younger and more influencial Turks are beginning to have more of an interest in the wine culture, however the progress is slow due to having a lack of serious wine laws. Within the hills of Istanbul lies Thrace’s Marmara which has the greatest concentration of wineries across Turkey. However, the number of grapes its grows is less than 16% of the grapes that end up in the wine. The majority of the grapes grown within Turkey comes from the Aegean region in an area called Izmir. The white wines frome Turkey have used Misket, which are small berry Muscat grapes and also Sultana grapes. Both these grapes produce very clean, fresh and overall neutral type of wines.