MCILHENNY COMPANY
TABASCO® Brand products are still manufactured by the McIlhenny Company, a company founded in 1868, USA, state of Louisiana, in Avery Island. And nowadays the company is a family business, handed down from generation to generation, which still operates from the same field.
THE STORY BEHIND THE FAMOUS TABASCO® Brand
According to tradition, TABASCO® Red Chili Sauce was created in the late 1860s by Edmund McIlhenny. An avid foodie and accomplished gardener, McIlhenny received some seeds of Capsicum frutescens peppers from Mexico or Central America. Curious what plants would grow from them, Edmund planted the seeds right on Avery Island in South Louisiana, tended the plants, and was amazed at the pepper's spicy taste.
So Edmund McIlhenny decided to create a pepper sauce to give food some flavor and excitement.
Many years later, field workers used a red stick, or "le petit bâton rouge", to measure the ripeness of peppers. Being faithful to the history of the TABASCO® brand, we still use it today to ensure the quality of our harvest.
Discover the story
THE MOST FAMOUS SAUCE IN THE WORLD
During the troubled period of the American Civil War, the local gastronomy of Louisiana was monotonous and tasteless due to the great shortages generated by the war. Thus, Edmund McIlhenny decided to create a pepper sauce that would give food flavor, taste and the pleasure of enjoying any food. He selected and crushed the reddest peppers from his plantation, then mixed them with Avery Island salt and aged them for 30 days in jars and barrels. Edmund McIlhenny then combined the resulting mixture with French white wine vinegar and aged it for another 30 days. After straining it, Edmund put the new sauce into a perfume-type spray bottle, which he then sealed with green wax.
THAT FAMOUS SAUCE THAT MR MCILHENNY MAKES
"That famous sauce that Mr. McIlhenny makes" proved so popular with family and friends that McIlhenny, a former banker, decided to start a new business and market his pepper sauce. He harvested his first crop of peppers in 1868. The next year, he shipped 658 bottles of the sauce at a dollar apiece to stores around New Orleans. He named it "TABASCO®", a word of Indian-Mexican origin that was believed to mean "place where the soil is wet" or "place of corals or oysters". McIlhenny filed his patent in 1870 and TABASCO® Sauce began its journey to set the culinary world on fire. Sales grew so that by the late 1870s TABASCO® sauce was being sold across America and even Europe.
A TIMELESS TASTE
For over 150 years, TABASCO® Sauce has been made the same way, only the aging process takes longer – up to three years in white oak barrels – and the vinegar is high quality and distilled. With labels in 36 languages and dialects, sold in more than 195 countries and territories, added to soldiers' rations or placed on restaurant tables around the globe, TABASCO® Brand is the world's most famous and favorite chili sauce.
Although we no longer seal our bottles with wax, the sauce inside is just as hot as the one McIlhenny first bottled in 1868.
1868: The first bottle ever produced
1927: A new bottle design
was born
AGED IN WHITE OAK BARRELS FOR A BOLD FLAVOR
Today, 150 years later, TABASCO® Sauce, the basic recipe, the process by which it is made and the ingredients remain virtually unchanged. 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.
9 VARIETIES, ENDLESS FLAVOR
We've come a long way since our beginnings in 1868. While the original red pepper sauce remains true to the history of the TABASCO® Brand, the TABASCO® Family contains 9 varieties of high-quality pepper sauces. From gentle to wild, there's something for everyone.
In Romania® we have 6 sauces from the TABASCO Brand range: TABASCO® Green chili sauce, TABASCO® Red chili sauce, TABASCO® Chipotle sauce, TABASCO® Habanero sauce, TABASCO® Sriracha sauce, TABASCO® Sweet& Spicy.
WE CHERISH OUR HERITAGE
We see a bright future full of opportunities. But those opportunities are only possible if we are good stewards of our natural resources so that they are here for generations to come. As a company that is over 150 years old, we want to build a business that will be sustainable for the next 150 years!