A brief history
Like so many other stories in the life of an architect, our story started with a building: a villa in Balatonfüred.
The building, originally intended as a second home, came with a few rows of vines, and it was discovered that in the first half of the last century, Lajos Szabó, a restaurateur from Budapest, the villa's builder, had converted the lower level of the house into a wine cellar.
As a designer and builder of modern residential buildings, I felt a special desire to restore not only the original beauty but also the function of this villa built before World War II. So, while we were renovating the villa, I went back to school to learn about viticulture and winemaking, and not much later I bottled my very first wine, a Merlot. Soon the vineyards began to grow and within a few years we built Villa Gyetvai Wine Estate with vineyards on the outskirts of Tihany, Aszófő and Paloznak and a well-established, modern winery in the cellar of the villa.
Art, villa terrace and a garden of ancient tress
In the hottest hours of summer or in the cold of winter, we enjoy drinking wine in the ground floor rooms of the villa, which also function as a kind of cultural salon, where we regularly organise temporary exhibitions, small or large wine tastings, wine dinners, social events and corporate events. But the favourite place for most of our guests is the terrace and the garden of the villa, where they can taste the wines of Villa Gyetvai at tables set up in the shade of the ancient trees.
