The art of perfume

A mission encapsulated in fragrance in Tihany

When you think of Tihany, you think of echoes, the Abbey, and lavender. When you think of the Hollán-Nyárádi family, you think of risk-taking, a sense of mission, and Tihany. To the uninitiated, these two lists may not mean much when placed side by side, but if we add Tihany Lavender Manufactory and Eau de Tihany to the latter, then more people may start to get the picture.

It may sound surprising, but it is not a twenty-year-old story that lavender has become more clearly associated with Tihany than anything else, and this could hardly have happened without the Hollán-Nyárádi family, who were surprised to discover during a trip in 2008 that no one in the village was interested in the legacy left behind by Gyula Bittera.

As a graduate teacher of natural history and chemistry, Bittera decided in 1918 to devote his life to essential oils and to make Hungary a world-class power in the essential oil industry and herbal processing. It was he who leased the southern slope of Csúcs Hill in Tihany from the abbey in 1926 to grow lavender, and within a few years he had succeeded in breaking into the French-dominated lavender market.

Past

The rebirth of the lavender heritage

The Essential Oil and Chemical Factory he founded exported $100,000 worth of products to the United States in 1939 and another $100,000 worth to other countries. However, his company was nationalized in 1949, his plantations were liquidated with one exception, and his story slowly faded into oblivion.

Although the Zátonyi family began growing lavender again on the peninsula in 1986, it was a long road from the lavender field next to the access road, which was used for pick-your-own events, to the plant once again becoming a worthy symbol of Tihany.

Back in 2008, the Hollán-Nyárádi family already thought that the situation was unworthy of both Tihany and Bittera. However, it took another trip in January 2009 for this realization to be followed by action. The couple missed the ferry, so they had an hour to spare, which they spent walking up to the village. That's when they realized that the village was deserted. Nothing was open, and they didn't meet a single soul.

The road to Eau de Tihany

When they saw a sign saying "For Rent" on a building, the family immediately felt they had found their mission: to continue a story that began in 1920 but was interrupted in the 1940s and 1950s, to share the colors, scents, and traditions of Tihany with the world, and at the same time to commemorate the work of a dedicated man.

When tens of thousands of businesses went bankrupt during the 2008-2009 global economic crisis, the family moved to the village and opened their first shop in the heart of Tihany. "That's how we are, we jump without a safety net," they say.

In the following years, they also invested in a plantation, opened their second shop in Tihany in 2013, and set up a factory, soap laboratory, exhibition, and showroom. And because, despite everything, they were afraid of fading into the background amid the competition that had emerged in the meantime, they also opened up to other medicinal herbs and fragrant plants and created the Eau de Tihany brand, which reached another significant milestone this spring.

The birth of Tihanyi Visszhang

Since nothing is more suitable for sharing or evoking experiences related to Tihany than a perfume—our sense of smell is directly connected to the emotional and memory centers of the brain—their daughter, is creating the second niche, or small-batch, special perfume of Eau de Tihany, called Tihanyi Visszhang (Tihany Echo).

 

As Natália says, the aromatic freshness of bergamot and juniper introduces us to the story, which unfolds in the shade of cedar forests on hay-scented summers. The absolute of narcissus—this green, fruity floral essence—evokes the figure of a fairy mourning her son at the heart of the fragrance, conveying delicate elegance and mystery.

Finding one's path has always been important in the family. As a child, Natália watched how a dream became reality, how a fragrance became valuable, and how something was born that transcended those who created it. As she said, at that time she only hoped that this path would one day become her own. Tihanyi Visszhang is also the opening piece in a series of legends from Tihany.

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