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Marking Tabasco’s 150th birthday with a tour of Avery Island

AVERY ISLAND, La. — One of the world’s most famous condiments is celebrating its 150th birthday: Tabasco.
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Tabasco is celebrating its 150th birthday. (Photo by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)

AVERY ISLAND, La. — One of the world’s most famous condiments is celebrating its 150th birthday: Tabasco.

Edmund McIlhenny (MAC-ul-hen-ee) created the famous pepper sauce in 1868 on Avery Island, Louisiana.

The company is still headquartered there, and is still run by McIlhenny’s descendants.

Visitors may tour the Tabasco museum and factory and try free samples of Tabasco-infused goodies. There’s also a unique nature preserve called Jungle Gardens that helped save snowy egrets from being wiped out in the U.S.

Museum exhibits include vintage Tabasco bottles along with the wooden barrels still used to age the sauce. A greenhouse displays some pepper plants, though the peppers are now mostly grown outside the U.S.

The sauce is bottled at the Avery Island factory, though, producing up to 700,000 bottles a day.