Avery Island: Tabasco an Iconic American Brand

One of the highlights during our trips to the Southern Louisiana bayou was the Tabasco Plant and Jungle Gardens on Avery Island.  Tabasco, an American Icon in the hot sauce trade, has been produced here since 1868.  Tabasco is one of the few American brands that supply the Queen of England by royal appointment.  Located in the Bayou of lower Lousiana west of New Orleans, it seems to be a place frozen in time.

Crossing on to the Island on a small wooden bridge gives you the feeling of stepping back into a different world.  The trees covered in Spanish moss and the brick Tabasco Hot sauce factory that could be from the civil war, it gives you the ghostly sensation of past unwritten history.

Their free tour gives you the Tabasco story; you even get to take a walk through the production lines.   It is still a family-owned business.   There are 136 shareholders with an estimated worth of over 1 billion dollars.  If you do the math, each man, woman, and child family member is worth about 7.5 million dollars. 

Tabasco is named after the pepper that is used in the hot sauce. It originated in the state of Tabasco in Mexico.   All the peppers used in the sauce at one time were grown on Avery Island.  Today the plants on the Island are used for seeds stock for the peppers grown in South and Central America.  This guarantees a constant flow of peppers to be processed at the factory.

An additional bonus was the Jungle Gardens, which is also on the Island.  It was started by Edward Avery McIlhenny, the second son of Edmund McIlhenny, the Tabasco founder.  The gardens span 170 acres of semitropical foliage.   Along with the gardens, you will see alligators and Egrets.  It is a beautiful place, with a collection of Camellias that is one of the best in the Nation.  It also contains a rare Buda Statue from 10th Century China that was purchase by Mr. McIlhenny in 1936.

Avery Island is not an island in the traditional sense.  It really is just a hill in the swamp in the middle of the Bayou.   There is an Egret breeding ground that was started with a single pair when they were endangered.  Now the flock runs into the thousands.  Avery Island is one of those unique American sites that must be seen.