McIlhenny, Company

TABASCO® brand products are made by McIlhenny Company, founded in 1868 on Avery Island, Louisiana. To this day, the company is still family-owned and operated on that very same 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. 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 Chairman of the Board and CEO, is the sixth McIlhenny in a chain of direct descendants who have strived to preserve the legacy and traditions of the company’s creator.