Tabasco's homeland fights for survival in Louisiana against storms and rising seas - NOLA.com

Tabasco's homeland fights for survival in Louisiana against storms and rising seas - NOLA.com

Tabasco

Harold Osborn, Executive Vice President at McIlhenny Company, walks through a building full of aging pepper mash at the Tabasco plant on Avery Island on Tuesday, January 9, 2018. (Photo by Brett Duke, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)

By Tristan Baurick, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune

AVERY ISLAND – The McIlhenny family fortune is hidden in barrels black with age, encrusted with salt and draped in cobwebs. They sit in a warehouse, stacked six-high in rows of 150 or more. Fiery peppers and a salty brine are aging inside the barrels, turning into one of the world’s most popular hot sauces: Tabasco. 

“This is the way it’s always been done,” said Harold “Took” Osborn, company vice president and great-great grandson of the company’s founder, Edmund McIlhenny. Quality control consultants fret about the appearance of the barrels. Can’t they look more modern, more sterile, more befitting of a big-time food company with exports to 187 countries?

“They say, ‘Terrible. Get rid of it.’ But it’s what makes us special. It’s how we’ve made Tabasco here for 150 years,” Osborn said. 

A giant wave nearly swept it all away. In 2005, Category-3 Hurricane Rita blew in from the Gulf of Mexico, grabbed hold of Vermilion Bay and pushed it into Avery Island, home base of the McIlhenny Co. since 1868. 

Tabasco factory

Avery Island, home of Tabasco hot sauce, south of Lafayette. This marsh grass was planted by staff and volunteers in Bayou Petite Anse south of Avery Island on some of the land owned by the McIlhenny family. They are very involved in marsh restoration efforts in the area. (Andrew Boyd, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)

It might be a good time for the McIlhenny Co. to move. Osborn, who is in charge of blending the sauce, international sales and marketing, admits that day may come. But not without a fight.  

The company is mounting an expensive and ambitious effort to protect its ancestral homeland and corporate headquarters. It’s poured millions of dollars into a large levee, pump system and backup generators. In the marshes, the company is taking a multifaceted, almost obsessive approach to restoration, planting grasses to reclaim land, filling in canals and re-engineering the flow of water in and out of the bayous surrounding the island. 

“The McIlhennys are very much in tune with their property,” said Cynthia Duet, deputy director of Audubon Louisiana. The group has teamed with the company on several projects, most notably co-management of a 187,000-acre conservation area on Vermilion Bay. “They know their land backwards and forwards. It’s been their real advantage,” she said.  

Tabasco

Harold Osborn, Executive Vice President at McIlhenny Company, shows how high flood waters reached during Hurricane Rita in 2005. He's standing next to a building used to store aging pepper mash at the Tabasco plant on Avery Island. (Brett Duke, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)  

From expansion to protection

The land has always been generous to the McIlhennys. Its biggest gift has been the mountain of salt that gives the island its dome-like appearance. One of five salt islands on Louisiana’s coast, the vast underground deposits supported the family’s first industry: salt mining. The family still mines salt, using it in the sauce and shipping it north for coating icy roads. 

Rich soil topping the salt dome fostered the growth of palmettos and ancient oaks drooping with Spanish moss. The soil was also good for growing peppers, first seeded on the island after the Civil War, when Edmund McIlhenny retreated to Avery after a failed banking career in New Orleans. He dove into his passions: gardening and tinkering with hot sauce recipes. The old salt mines came handy for the pepper’s preservation. Three years of aging is what set McIlhenny’s sauce apart from his competitors. By his death in 1890, Tabasco had made him a very wealthy man.

The island continued to give in the 1930s, when oil was discovered. The McIlhennys still lease land to oil companies, but a family-mandated “leave-no-trace” ethic keeps many away. 

Tabasco

Harold Osborn, Executive Vice President at McIlhenny Company, looks into a large vat in the blending room at the Tabasco plant on Avery Island on Tuesday, January 9, 2018. (Photo by Brett Duke, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)

“A lot of oil canals were put here in the ‘30s or ‘40s, but we learned very quickly that those were damaging,” Osborn said. “We’ve been trying to plug those up ever since.”

Demand for Tabasco outpaced the island’s capacity to grow peppers years ago. Seeds are raised there, but now about 99 percent of the peppers are cultivated in Latin America and South Africa. Once shipped to Avery, the peppers undergo a process identical to the one established by Edmund in 1868. The peppers are ground into a salted mash and then stored in reused bourbon barrels for three years. The mash is hauled to the blending facility, where it’s mixed with Tabasco’s third and last ingredient, vinegar. 

The fumes are potent. 

“The deer congregate here during the summer because it keeps the mosquitos away,” Osborn said.