Tabasco! 150 years of the best pepper sauce ever!

Finally! I have wanted to visit the Tabasco plant since I was very young. Back in the 60's,  'My' Papa cooked a lot of great meals.  I liked sitting with him and he would let me sample the gumbo, jambalaya, or whatever he was cooking.  One day he was adding Tabasco to the pot and I asked if I could try it.  He put a drop of Tabasco on a saltine cracker for me to taste. It is great and I was hooked on it!

It is amazing that ALL the Tabasco products come from Avery Island, Louisiana.

The museum was very nice and informative about the origins of Tabasco.  The McIlhenny family has always been very supportive of the military.  John McIlhenny was a rough rider with Theodore Roosevelt.  We always loved getting the small Tabasco bottles in MRE's that were handed out to us after Hurricane Ivan in September of 2004..  I only took a few pictures in the museum. They even have a bottle Tabasco from the one of the earliest batches sold.

The tour of the plant was very informative. I knew that Tabasco was aged 3 years in barrels but did not know that the barrels are covered with a layer of salt to protect the sauce from contamination.

I think we found the perfect size Tabasco bottles.

After the tour, we had lunch at the 1868 Restaurant on site.  They had a wide selection of sauces at each table.  I tried all of them just to be polite.

Shawna had a sampler platter and I had the Crawfish Etouffee.  The food was wonderful.

The store has an amazing variety of Tabasco products.  In the back of the store, they have a tasting line with every type of Tabasco made.  They even had honey from the bees on the island. It was not spicy so I think the bees did not get the message to pollinate only the hot pepper plants. They have all the types of pepper sauce, sweet pepper sauce, steak sauce, mustards, honey (from hives on the island), and everything in between.