Tabasco is the hot-sauce brand that originates from Avery Island, Louisiana.
Edmund McIlhenny began producing the sauce there in 1868, establishing the McIlhenny Company. The original red sauce combines tabasco peppers, vinegar, and salt. Avery Island is a salt dome in Iberia Parish, surrounded by bayous and marshes, rather than a conventional offshore island.
Traditional production gives Tabasco its distinctive aging process. Peppers are mashed with salt, packed into used white-oak whiskey barrels, and aged for up to three years. The mash is then strained, blended with distilled vinegar, and bottled. The familiar small bottle is modeled on the cologne-style bottles used for the earliest batches.
Tabasco is a brand, not simply the name of every Louisiana hot sauce. Cholula, Frank’s RedHot, and Crystal are separate brands with different origins and recipes. The company’s invention story is also not completely uncontested: historical accounts credit Louisiana plantation owner Maunsel White with making an earlier pepper sauce, though McIlhenny built the enduring commercial brand.