Bonnie: Tabasco has always been synonymous with hot sauce to me. When I began writing about food, this classic 140+ year-old sauce didn’t have many competitors. Edmund McIlhenny created Tabasco brand Original Red Sauce in the 1860s from seeds of Capsicum frutescens peppers that came from Mexico or Central America. McIlhenny sowed those seeds on Avery Island in South Louisiana, and nurtured the special peppers before making a mash and turning them into the sauce.
Earlier this year, four other lucky food professionals and I were guests of the McIlhennys on Avery Island (about 140 miles west of New Orleans), staying at the Marsh House, one of the original homes of the McIlhenny family. There, we were treated to true southern hospitality – experiencing a crawfish-and-other-seafood boil
, boudin (blood sausage), andouille and many other southern delicacies. One Marsh House breakfast specialty is the infamous fried pies freshly made by Stanley Dry.
We were there mainly to see how the company still grows the peppers, selects and crushes the reddest ones, combines them with Avery Island salt and then ages the “mash” for three years in white-oak barrels before adding vinegar and bottling it. As a visitor, (you can tour the factory daily from 9 am to 4 pm, except on holidays) part of our tour (and yours) includes a taste of the fiery mash – a sensation I still haven’t forgotten – and which earned me a special spoon necklace indicating I did so.
Always looking for a Bite for this site, I visited the Tabasco Country Store and considered a couple items to share: *Spicy Salt*, a blend of Avery Island Salt and the essence of Tabasco ($6.95 for a 6-ounce bottle); Tabasco 7 Spice Chili Starter ($3.25 per 16-ounce jar; available mild and spicy) where you just add a pound of ground chicken or beef and, if desired, some beans; and — the product I selected to feature here — Tabasco Reserve.
The McIlhenny family makes a reserve edition for the family each year from peppers grown only on Avery Island. (Today, peppers for the brand are grown all over the world with seeds that started at Avery Island.) This mash is aged for eight years instead of three. A reserve limited edition was sold once before for the 140th anniversary in 2008 that was not aged as long as this limited edition one!
Bryan: From the very start in 1868, as the McIlhenny family began producing one of the world’s finest hot sauces, it also annually produced an exclusive Family Reserve sauce created solely for the private use of family and friends. This fabled firewater has historically been unavailable to the general public, but is occasionally (think Willy Wonka opening his factory) sold in small batches. It just so happens, the 2011 Family Reserve has recently been made available for purchase to Tabasco connoisseurs everywhere.
The sauce is just like the normal sauce, but a bit different in that it is produced from a tiny portion of the pepper crop, representing only the best of the best. Additionally, while normal sauces are aged in oak barrels for three years, McIlhenny select pepper mash is left to age for an a much longer period, sometimes for up to eight years. The sauce is then sealed with green wax (the original bottling wax) and sold for $24.95 per bottle, many times the cost of a “normal” bottle!
You might think, “What! Why would I want that?” Well my friends… there are wines and there are fine wines. The best winemakers in the world always create reserve collections and hot sauces (oddly) are no different. Winemakers’ expertise generally goes back generations, compounding expertise over time to create the best personal reserves. The McIlhenny’s are no different.
For more than 140 years, Tabasco sauce has been made in much the same way. The biggest difference is that it’s now labeled in more than 20 languages and sold in more than 150 countries around the globe… five generations and counting. What I’m saying here is this: If you like hot sauce as some people like fine wine, this is the sauce you’ve been waiting for. This is your _Chilean grand cru,_ your _Mouton Rothschild._
You’ve got to have this one at home, if Tabasco is your thing.
Eric: Tabasco has worked its way into our foodie vocabulary, synonymous with pepper sauce, similar to the likes of Heinz, French’s and A1 with their respective condiments.
The company’s most recent product, Tabasco Family Reserve, is a limited edition release of their family pepper sauce recipe aged for eight years. The special edition package resembles efforts made by wineries and distilleries to provide character in more of a display piece – noted in the bottles wax seal and chain-link collar.
Tabasco aficionados no longer should fear hiding their favorite condiment. If anything, they should revel in the products design, and scoff at the Tapatio and Cholula’s of the world.
I like how nobody here actually TASTED the sauce. They just wrote standard ad blurb-ese about it. What has this world come to.
Johnny, thanks for your comment. Of course we tasted it! It’s quite special.
I bought the $10 bottle (I consume hot sauce not use it as a conversational piece) and have to say it definitely has a better stronger flavor especially since it uses a white wine vinegar base instead of the plain distilled. If it only cost $10 a bottle in the local supermarket I would buy it more often but with it costing an additional $10 for shipping to my place even with UPS ground its not really worth it ($20+ total).