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While visiting my parents in Louisiana, the day was forecasted to be a beautiful one and since I had some free time, I thought it would be nice to spend the day at a place I had last seen as a child on a school trip.
Avery Island, home of Tabasco® Sauce!
As we drove down the road to the island, canals on each side, I struggled to remember bits and pieces of that particular school trip…azaleas was all that came to mind. The beautiful flowering shrub that blooms in the spring with bright pink and white blossoms was all I could remember surrounding us while having lunch in a grassy spot under a large oak tree.
Nothing about tabasco.
Apparently, the McIlhenney’s have been hard at work on the island, making it a destination for those interested in the tabasco making process.
For over five generations, the McIhenney family and their employees have lived and worked on Avery Island, tending the pepper fields and producing Tabasco®, a pungent sauce made from the fruit of a capsicum pepper, and making the Tabasco® name a household one. No matter where you are in the world, you can usually ask for a bottle and find one available.
Visiting Avery Island many years ago, we spent the day in Jungle Gardens, a botanical garden and bird sanctuary, created by Edward McIlhenney, but there wasn’t a tourist attraction which showed how Tabasco® was made.
Today, the Tabasco® Factory Tour is a visitor’s center which offers a ten-stop self-guided tour through the museum, the greenhouse, the barrel warehouse and the factory building. Hungry for some authentic cajun food? They have that too, in the Restaurant 1868. Need souvenirs? The country store has every kind of Tabasco® related product you can think of.
As we pulled into the parking lot, I was surprised at the beautiful layout of the property as well as the buildings designed to represent the Cajun architecture of the area. My parents had visited a few years back and told me how nice the Visitor’s Center was, but I did not realize to what extent.
After paying our admission, we meandered through the museum, learning about the McIlhenney family and the tabasco sauce’s beginnings, from why the type of bottle was used to used to the use of its “caution” label.
My favorite part was the merchandise dedicated to the Tabasco® brand. From Tabasco® Barbies, to bobbleheads to golf clubs, there are many fans of the product willing to buy products that look like it or bear the label. Tabasco® has appeared in many motion pictures, television shows, songs, novels, comics and photographs. Stars that are fans have even gotten in on the action. Supermodel Kate Upton sported a dress with the Tabasco logo as a Halloween costume in 2011 and Michael Anthony of Van Halen owns a Tabasco® Sauce themed guitar.
Another part of the museum that was especially interesting to me was of life on the island. A friend of our family grew up there and her father worked for the McIlhenney family for most of his life. I remember attending her wedding as a child and how the idea that we were going “all the way” to an island was so exciting. The modern day inhabitants, however, were once preceded by Native Americans who had found that the island harbored a precious natural resource…a massive salt dome. The Native Americans extracted the salt which was traded with other tribes. Much like the Native Americans, the McIlhenney’s made a living from the land by discovering that he field’s unique soil aided in the growth of the pepper which was used in the production of Tabasco®. Today, some members from the same family who once assisted Edward McIlhenney in his quest to produce the unique product still work and reside on the island.
After exiting the museum, we followed the well marked path leading to other parts of the tour. As we made our way to the rear of the property, we were a little taken aback at the signs warning that bears frequent the area. Cautiously, we walked along the well-manicured path, under the massive oak trees toward the Greenhouse where pepper plants are cultivated. It should be noted that while the first peppers were completely grown and then mashed into the finished product, the seed peppers now are grown in the unique soil of the salt dome but then exported to international farmers to ensure steady growing seasons.
After the Greenhouse, we moved to the Barrel Museum which impressively displays many barrels and the materials used to produce them. A short video as well as photography aids in the understanding of how these wooden containers used to age the peppers are constructed.
Continuing on the the Barrel Warehouse, it was a necessity to breathe shallowly and sometimes completely pinch your nose. This huge warehouse safeguards thousands of white oak barrels of mash from many nations which is aged for up to three years. These barrels are topped with a layer of salt, from the island’s dome, which protects the mash from impurities. With the evolving and mellowing of the flavors, the smell becomes extremely pungent…especially on warm days.
After the aging is complete and the mash is checked for flavor and heat level, it is then transferred to the Tabasco® factory, our next stop. During the fourth stage of the tour, we learned how the mash is blended in large vats.
More information on the island was presented and then we descended into the Salt Mine.
Well, not really.
The sixth part of the tour is a diorama showing how minors work and extract salt from the mine. Exiting the “mine”, we entered into the part of the plant where the Tabasco® is bottled. Being that it was a Saturday, the plant was not in operation, however, I am sure that watching the bottles travel throughout the busy workroom and the numbers add up on the production board is quite impressive.
Once our tour was complete, we headed to Restaurant 1868. Invited to a crawfish boil that afternoon, I insisted that I would only accompany my parents and save room for the many pounds of the crustaceans that I planned to stuff myself with later in the day. Once I walked into the cafeteria-style eatery, smelled the cajun cooking and read the wide array of dishes offered, my resolve was starting to crack. The final straw was when a patron walked by with a plate of the crawfish nachos…okay, so I made room for crawfish nachos and later had boiled crawfish!
Stomachs full, we finally headed next door to the country store. Anything Tabasco® can be found here, but, the best part is the sampling area in the rear of the store. You can try many of the different flavors of Tabasco and some samples of the food products. You’d think after my huge plate of crawfish nachos, I should not have been able to look at food, but I sampled everything, including the Tabasco flavored green beans. In fact, I loved them so much, I walked out with a case of them!
Truly a surprise, the Tabasco® Factory Tour was more than I ever imagined. I visit some unique cities and museums around the world, but this well put-together attraction can measure up any day.
Makes this Cajun girl proud!
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Tabasco Factory Tours
- https://www.tabasco.com/
- Address: 32 Wisteria Rd, Avery Island, LA 70513
- Hours: 0900-1600, daily
- Admission: Self-guided tour, Adults, $5.50, Self-guided tour+Jungle Gardens combo, Adult, $12.50, Child, ages 5-12, $9.50, Senior, $11.25. Guided tours must be reserved at least two weeks in advance, $200 for minimum of 20 people, $10 per additional guest.
- Getting There: Take US 90 Exit 128A on LA 14 toward New Iberia for approximately three quarters of a mile. Take a right on LA 329, and it is 7 miles to Avery Island’s TABASCO® and Jungle Gardens