OK , so there are n’t bottles growing off of bushes , and you wo n’t find a charming cherry falls of spicy sauce feed from the rocks . But if you love Tabasco and all thing spicy , Avery Islandisyour Wonka ’s chocolate factory .
Named after a family that settle there in the 1830s , Avery Island is a little piece of land in Louisiana that ’s home to something boastful : A table salt dome where virtually every drop of Tabasco sauce is make . The legend goes something likethis : Back in the 1860s , Edmund McIlhenny , who married into the Avery family , was yield someCapsicum frutescenspeppers to try growing at his in - laws ’ plantation on Avery Island . They flourished , and McIlhenny quickly discovered that mashing them with some snowy acetum and the island ’s natural table salt made for a somewhat tasty sauce that greatly improved the flavorless food for thought of the day . It turned out that others suppose the spicy concoction was pretty good , too .
Although Tabasco sauce is create on Avery Island , not all of the peppercorn are really rise there . Sometime in the sixties , demand outgrow the island ’s capacitance to grow peppers — the land mint , after all , is only about2,200 acresand 3 miles across at its wide of the mark dot . In response , the company started ship their seeds to various locations in Latin America , where they now own farms . They do grow some Tabasco - destined peppers on their property , though partly for research purpose . For model , theytesteda auto that would automatize the pepper - picking mental process ( say that three times fast ) , but found that it was ineffective to discover the precise shade of red ripeness the black pepper should be when harvested . As a final result , Tabasco peppers are still hand - pick by workers who use a colored control stick to equalize the ripe shade .
In improver to the pepper farm , the island is also home to abouthalfof the fellowship ’s 200 employees . Many of them are posterity of employees who worked there more than 100 years ago . There ’s also a bird colony , rare plants , and a shrine housing a giant , 900 - twelvemonth - oldBuddha statue , which was a gift to McIlhenny in 1936 . The little island that raise a sauce with a big squawk is worth a sojourn — even if you ’re not a lover of all thing spicy .
