Our first stop after leaving Texas was New Iberia,
Louisiana. There are a lot of things to
do in this area, one of them being the Tabasco Factory Tour. I had been looking forward to taking this
tour for a long time.
How do you make Tabasco Pepper Sauce?
Apparently, it’s pretty simple!
1 - Plant seeds.
2 - Pick peppers.
3 - Mash peppers and add salt.
4 - Put mash in white oak barrels, cover with salt.
5 - Wait 3 years.
6 - Remove mash from barrels, add high-quality vinegar,
and pour into 1,800-gallon wooden vats.
7 - Stir for 3 weeks.
8 - Strain seeds and skins.
9 - Bottle it up!
In 1868, Edmund McIlhenny developed the recipe for
Tabasco Original Red Pepper Sauce. He
was given seeds from the Capsicum frutescens plant and started the first
commercial pepper crop.
Tabasco is thought to be a Mexican Indian word meaning ‘Place
where the soil is humid’ or ‘Place of the coral or oyster shell’.
His first year, McIlhenny sent out 658 bottles of sauce
for $1 each to groceries in the Gulf area.
Today the factory makes 700,000 bottles per day. They are sold in over 195 countries and
territories. There are 8 varieties -
from mild to wild and the labels are printed in 25 languages. The original sauce has been made continuously for over 150 years!
Our first stop was to purchase tickets. $5.50 for seniors or $11.25 with the
additional Jungle Garden. We opted for
both.
I was delighted when we were handed these mini bottles of
tabasco sauce! I will, of course, stick
a magnet on one of them.
The first stop on the self-guided tour is the Museum
(there are 9 stops).
The bottle and diamond label design haven’t changed much
since 1869. McIlhenny bottled his sauce
for friends and family in discarded, long-necked cologne bottles, the only
bottles he found readily available in the post-Civil War South.
Box designs throughout the years.
The museum is very nice and has a lot of displays.
Many displays featuring the McIlhenny family.
Mini bottle of Tabasco included in a MRE.
A gift to soldiers
Miniature bottles of Tabasco in a machine-gun ammunition belt.
An early advertisement.
Humvee bumper sticker.
After the museum (Stop #1), we headed outside to
Stop #2.
Along the way we saw some interesting yard art.
Ta-bass-co
Caught with a pepper!
We were told bears are starting to come back into this area.
Stop #2 is a small display greenhouse.
My camera and glasses immediately fogged up from the
humidity inside the greenhouse!
This is a small greenhouse with a few of the different
peppers growing in pots.
The “little red stick” is painted the perfect shade of
fiery red that lets the pickers know when the peppers are ready to pick.
Stop # 3 - Barrels
The barrels are made of white oak. When they are received from the manufacturer,
they have steel rings that are immediately removed and replaced with stainless
steel rings.
The barrels can be used for up to 50 years. The old barrels can be purchased.
Old barrels for purchase.
Chips made from the old barrels can also be purchased.
These are thousands of barrels full of mash (mashed
peppers and salt). The lids are covered
with salt. The barrels sit in the
warehouse for 3 years.
Stop # 4 is the Blending room.
When you first walk into the building there is this
wonderful 19th century safe that held pepper seeds.
After the mash is aged for 3 years it is blended with
high-quality distilled vinegar and stirred periodically in 1,800-gallon wooden
vats for 2-3 weeks.
After 2-3 weeks the mash is strained of skins and seeds
before being sent for bottling. This is the finished Tabasco sauce.
A McIlhenny family member personally inspects and
taste-test each batch of pepper mash for flavor and heat.
Giant vats of sauce.
They even had smell-o-vision!
Smell the Smell, Feel the Burn.
The leftover skins and seeds are ground and sold to other
companies for use in everything from candy to medicines.
Stop # 5 houses information about the Jungle Gardens
(more on that in the next blog), Native People, etc.
Stop #6 talks about Avery “Island”.
Avery Island is a 2,200-acre salt dome. Millions of years ago an ancient body of
water evaporated repeatedly, each time leaving behind a layer of salt. That salt eventually measured thousands of
feet thick. The downward pressure of the
Earth’s mantle caused a column of the salt to push upward toward the surface,
creating a salt dome.
Saline springs attracted animals to the Island for
thousands of years. Fossils indicate
that there were mastodons, mammoths, giant sloths, bison and wild horses, among
other species.
Fossilized tooth from a mastodon.
Excavated by Avery
Island salt miners in 1885.
Avery Island rises above the surrounding coastal salt
marsh to about 160 feet above sea level.
At its widest point it stretches to about 2.5 miles.
Most of the mined salt is used for municipal purposes,
but some of it is set aside for use in producing Tabasco Sauce.
Photo of the inside of the salt mine.
Our next stop was #7 - Bottling.
Today they were bottling green sauce to be
shipped to Japan.
Caps are added.
The Capper.
Labels are added.
The bottles make their way down the line.
The sealing machine shrink wraps a small amount of
plastic around the cap.
This bottle was rejected while we were watching. Notice the shrink wrap is not as it should
be!
The bottles are put into individual cartons.
There are about 200 employees.
Stop # 8 shows the many different flavors of Tabasco and
foods made with Tabasco.
The labels are printed in 25 different languages.
This is the label for Japan.
Spanish label.
Miniature bottles for businesses
such as Wendy’s and
Chipotles.
Tabasco is sold in every country on this map painted in
red.
Giant display bottles.
There are 8 varieties of Tabasco Sauce.
Stop # 9 is the gift shop/store.
Of course we made some purchases!
Mustard
T-shirts
The factory tour is definitely magnet worthy!
Next Time: We are
finished with the Tabasco tour but there is more to see with our ticket
purchase! Stay tuned for the Jungle
Gardens.
The best description of a Louisiana hot sauce factory tour that I've ever read!
ReplyDeleteIt was a really interesting self-guided tour!
DeleteThat looks like an interesting tour. You described it very well.
ReplyDeleteWe will have to add that stop to our wish list. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDelete