McIlhenny Company is America's premier manufacturer of Pepper Sauces, and with our dedication to quality and tradition, it's easy to see why. TABASCO® is the only nationally and globally advertised brand of pepper sauce. We have a company history that spans over 140 years, and we use that experience every day in our exciting foodservice division.
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TABASCO® brand products are made by McIlhenny Company, founded in 1868 on Avery Island, Louisiana, and still family-owned and operated on that very site.
Sowing the Seeds
According to family tradition, Original TABASCO® brand Pepper Sauce was created in the mid-to-late 1860s by Edmund McIlhenny. A food lover and avid gardener, McIlhenny was given seeds of Capsicum frutescens peppers that had come from Mexico or Central America. On Avery Island in south Louisiana, he sowed the seeds, nurtured the plants, and delighted in the spicy flavor of the peppers they bore.
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McIlhenny Company: Family-Owned & Operated
The Birth of A Pepper Sauce
The diet of the Reconstruction South was bland and monotonous, especially by Louisiana standards. So Edmund McIlhenny decided to create a pepper sauce to give the food some spice and flavor — some excitement. Selecting and crushing the reddest peppers from his plants, he mixed them with Avery Island salt and aged this “mash” for 30 days in crockery jars and barrels. McIlhenny then blended the mash with French white wine vinegar and aged the mixture for at least another 30 days. After straining it, he transferred the sauce to small cologne-type bottles with sprinkler fitments, which he then corked and sealed in green wax. (The sprinkler fitment was important because his pepper sauce was concentrated and best used when sprinkled, not poured.)
“That Famous Sauce Mr. McIlhenny Makes”
“That Famous Sauce Mr. McIlhenny Makes” proved so popular with family and friends that McIlhenny, previously a banker, decided to embark on a new business venture by marketing his pepper sauce. He grew his first commercial pepper crop in 1868. The next year, he sent out 658 bottles of sauce at one dollar apiece wholesale to grocers around the Gulf Coast, particularly in New Orleans. He labeled it “Tabasco,” a word of Mexican Indian origin believed to mean “place where the soil is humid” or “place of the coral or oyster shell.” McIlhenny secured a patent in 1870, and TABASCO® Sauce began its journey to set the culinary world on fire. Sales grew, and by the late 1870s he sold his sauce throughout the U.S. and even in England.
Still Made the Same Way
Over 140 years later, TABASCO® Sauce is made much the same way except now the aging process for the mash is longer – up to three years in white oak barrels and the vinegar is high quality distilled vinegar. Labeled in 22 languages and dialects, sold in over 160 countries and territories, added to soldiers’ rations, and put on restaurant tables around the globe, it is the most famous, most preferred pepper sauce in the world.
Five Generations Later
TABASCO® Sauce is still made on Avery Island, Louisiana, to this day. In fact, about half of the company’s 200 employees actually live on Avery Island, with many of their parents and grandparents having worked and lived there as well. Paul McIlhenny, the current president, is the sixth McIlhenny in a chain of direct descendants who has strived to preserve the legacy and traditions of the company’s creator.
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A LABOR OF LOVE: HOW TABASCO® WAS MADE
The Peppers
Edmund McIlhenny was given seeds of Capsicum frutescens peppers that came from Mexico or Central America. And he first planted them on Avery Island, Louisiana, over 140 years ago. Today, just as then, when the peppers reach the perfect shade of deep red and are at their juiciest, they are carefully picked by hand. (Young peppers are green, then turn yellow, orange, and, finally, deep red as they age.) When in doubt, pickers can gauge the color by comparing it to a small wooden dowel, “le petit bâton rouge,” painted the preferred hue of TABASCO® red.
In 1965, McIlhenny Company ran out of room on the Island and starting growing additional peppers in Latin America. (All the seeds are still grown on Avery Island before being sent to Latin America, where they are planted and grow into peppers.) When those peppers are harvested, they’re shipped back to Avery Island for the next step in the process.
Aged for up to Three Years
After the peppers are picked, they are mashed and then mixed with a small amount of Avery Island salt, extracted from the salt mines that lie beneath the Island. The pepper mash is placed in white oak barrels, and the wooden tops of the barrels are then covered with more Avery Island salt, which acts as a natural barrier to protect the barrels’ contents. The mash is allowed to ferment and then age for up to three years in the McIlhenny warehouse.
McIlhenny Family’s Close Supervision
The mash is inspected by a member of the McIlhenny family. When approved, the fully-aged mash is then blended with high quality distilled vinegar. Numerous stirrings and about four weeks later, the pepper skins, pulp and seeds are strained out using 3 different-sized screens. Then the “finished” sauce is bottled by modern methods, labeled in 22 languages and dialects, and prepared for shipment to over 160 countries and territories around the world.
The following year’s pepper crop is insured by the McIlhennys, who personally select the best plants in the field during harvest. The pepper seeds from those select plants are treated and dried - for use the following year - and then stored both on the Island and in a local bank vault as a hedge against any disaster that might befall future crops.
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TABASCO® is a registered trademark for sauces and other goods and services; TABASCO, the TABASCO bottle design and label designs are the exclusive property of McIlhenny Company, Avery Island, Louisiana, USA 70513. www.TABASCO.com
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For more information on TABASCO® please feel free to visit their website at www.TABASCO.com
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