Tabasco Town: An American Snapshot
Aug. 2, 2008 — -- You know the old joke -- someone slips Tabasco sauce into a food item someone else is about to sip or sample. It could be Jackie Gleason with a sandwich he will soon bite into by mistake, or any number of cartoon animals using the hot sauce in their pranks, such as Bugs Bunny in the cartoon "French Rarebit" 57 years ago or a mouse in "Bye Bye Bluebeard," dating back 59 years. The red face, the throbbing tongue -- you always know what the reaction will be.
Long ago, a jingle described Tabasco as "special seasoning." Place emphasis on "long ago," since it seems the sauce, brand and bottle have been around forever and everywhere.
But it does comes from somewhere, which is a story in itself.
It all started 140 years ago on a hot, humid farm field on Avery Island, in a remote part of Louisiana, where a businessman planted some pepper seeds. The McIhennys, the family that has owned the farm for five generations, are still making Tabasco right there in old wooden barrels -- and the island has hardly changed since then, too.
"This is where the whole Tabasco process starts," said Harold "Took" Osborn, a great-great grandson of the first Tabasco maker, from the family-owned company. "The more we do it the old-fashioned way, the better the sauce is. We receive the mash, it's ground up, mixed with salt and it's put into these bourbon barrels."
This is not a museum demonstration, it's the real thing.
"This is how you taste mash," Took said. "You can take your finger; you get about this and you put it in your mouth. And you have to spit it out [or not], but I would recommend you spit it out."
Took's advice should not be taken lightly. This mash can be hot.
The air is full of the fragrance of 100 grain vinegar, and it's very hard to breathe without coughing.
"This is the actual finished sauce over here. It's ready to go," said Took, as he pointed to large vats of the spicy concoction. "This is about 1,700 gallons of Tabasco sauce ready to be bottled."
These 700,000 bottles a day travel all over the world. The language on the label is adjusted for the destination, and every now and then, a bottle comes back, such as a perfectly intact 19th-century vintage Tabasco bottle found in an attic in rural New York.
