Meet The Tiny, Charming Louisiana Hotspot That Tabasco Sauce Calls Home

Tabasco is one of the world's most iconic hot sauces, and you can visit the place where it all began and is still made today. The McIlhenny family has manufactured, aged, and bottled their special sauce for more than 150 years on Avery Island, just inland from the Louisiana coast, about 130 miles from New Orleans.

Avery Island is the largest of five salt domes in the area and is considered the highest point on the Gulf Coast. In the 1770s, Europeans arrived, naming it Île Petite Anse ("Little Cove Island"). In 1818, John Craig Marsh built a sugar plantation there, later selling it to his sons-in-law, one of whom was Daniel Dudley Avery, a judge whose family established the area's salt mines. Avery bought the island in its entirety in 1868.

The same year, Edmund McIlhenny (husband of Avery's daughter Mary) grew his first commercial crop of Capsicum frutescens or tabasco peppers, from which he developed his spicy, vinegary condiment. In 1869, he sold 658 bottles of his hot sauce to regional grocers, and by 1889 he was producing 41,472 bottles of the stuff. Tabasco Brand Pepper Sauce got its name from the pepper itself, named after the Mexican state of Tabasco.

Today, Tabasco's empire hasn't moved from where it got its start. Now in its fifth generation of sauce-making, the McIlhenny family has made its Avery Island factory a destination.

Avery Island might be one of Louisiana's best-kept secrets for gourmands and nature lovers alike. Visitors can savor Tabasco's history and culture by taking a cooking class, a factory tour where they can see the sauce's barrel-aging method, and visit the pepper greenhouse where seed stock grows. The Tabasco Museum recounts the company's history, while at the rustic 1868 restaurant, the hot sauce flows, natch. The menu serves classic Cajun and Creole dishes, including chicken and sausage gumbo, crawfish étouffée, and other bites like boudin eggrolls.

The McIlhennys have long been enthusiastic conservationists. In 1895, Edmund and Mary's son Edward Avery "Ned" McIlhenny established Bird City, a private wildfowl refuge on Avery Island. He later expanded and converted it into the 170-acre Jungle Gardens. Now open to the public, these gardens are brimming with life: Bamboo forests, oak trees draped in Spanish moss, wildlife including deer, alligators, and raccoons, and more than 150 species of songbirds, herons, egrets, ducks, and geese. There's even a giant ancient Buddha statue tucked away in a garden shrine. 

Part foodie destination, part wildlife refuge and gardens, Avery Island is a unique slice of Americana.