TABASCO HOT SAUCE HISTORY TABASCO brand products are produced by McIlhenny Company, founded in 1868 at Avery Island, Louisiana, and still in operation on that very site today. The Company's roots were actually cultivated a few years earlier, shortly after the McIlhenny family returned to the Island from self-imposed exile during the Civil War. According to family tradition, founder Edmund McIlhenny obtained some hot pepper seeds from a traveler who had recently arrived in Louisiana from Central America. McIlhenny planted them on Avery Island, and then experimented with pepper sauces until he hit upon one he liked. By 1868 Edmund McIlhenny began making pepper sauce, and during the early 1870's his concoction found its way to New York City, where a major nineteenth-century wholesale grocery firm, E.C. Hazard and Company, helped to introduce the product to the northeastern U.S. and beyond. Tradition holds that McIlhenny first used discarded cologne bottles topped with sprinkler fitments for distributing his sauce, important since his pepper sauce was concentrated and was best used when sprinkled, not poured on. The ever-inventive McIlhenny washed the used bottles thoroughly, and made up labels himself. Sales grew, and by the late 1870's he even sold his sauce in England. Only One TABASCO In 1870, Edmund McIlhenny received letters patent for his unique formula for processing peppers into a fiery red sauce. That same process is still in use today, and Avery Island remains the headquarters for the worldwide company which is still owned and operated by direct descendants of Edmund McIlhenny. | 
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