Keep'n it spicy

Day 155
Creole LA- Charenton LA

We made a plan last night to get up bright and early. Hit the road by 0800 so we had plenty of time to get parked and see some spicy sauce. Can you say failure? How about up by 0730 and on the road by 0930. Penny finds her way out of the fog and starts driving down the narrow 2 lane state highways in the Atchafalaya basin. After a couple of hours and one wrong turn we end up parking Penny at a casino and  back tracking to something I'm excited to see. Ladies and Gents, I present to you the TABASCO brand manufacturing plant.

A couple of $5 tickets gets us on the self guided tour and we start to wander the grounds of this amazing place. The plant is situated on a unique piece of ground called Avery Island. It is a small island roughly 2.5 miles across that is made out of a salt dome. Back in the 1886 Edmund McIlhenny decided he would build a company to sell his spicy sauce concoction.  We start to learn the info with a walk through the museum.

The museum is well laid out and easy on the eyes. Plenty of relics and antiques fill the brightly lit glass cases. I'd put the quality of layout and presentation right up there with a city/ state museum. Upon finishing our browsing, the tour directs us out to the next stop. Walking down the sidewalk brings a surprise neither of us expected. 

Seriously? I have to worry about bears here? 

Tiptoe past the furry balls of death and step into the greenhouse for a look at what kinds of peppers go into the product. This greenhouse is only here for tourism. Out on the back side of the property is 5 acres of Tabasco pepper plants. Fortunately it's not nearly enough for the production demand and more peppers are bought from countries all over the world.

Red nuggets of hot deliciosness

Bounding out of the greenhouse takes guests to stop #3. After the peppers are cultivated they are smashed into a pulp to make a mash. Following that is a sprinkle of the salt mined on site and it all gets crammed into a barrel. The barrels are then topped with more salt to keep out contaminants while they sit in a warehouse for 3 years. Seriously, they let this stuff sit for 3 years before it can go to the next step of production.

So about that salt. Averly Island is made up out of a salt dome. Back in the day they were digging a hole and just 12 feet below the surface someone hit a solid bed of salt. Now the land is leased out to Cargill Foods and they are mining the living bejeezus out of this place. The best estimate they have is the salt goes down as far as Mt. Everest is high.

I like my food just like my wife; Spicy&Salty

Three years go by and the barrels of mash get de-skinned and de-seeded. Next they get dumped into these blenders. Here pepper goo gets married with distilled vinegar and they spend the next 2-3 weeks spinning in circles to become best friends.

Keep moving down the tour trail and step into the bottling room. It's a rare thing to find a production plant that allows visitors to watch them in a fishbowl. This isn't always a bad thing. It keeps employees on their toes and forces the plant to look nice.

Somehow I get the feeling that the extra motivation isn't actually necessary here. You see, this Tabasco plant has an amazing back story. The family did a tremendous amount to give back. On this 2,200 acre island is a dedicated wildlife sanctuary. It must be a great place to live also, seeing as how the family put in hundreds of homes for their employees. These employees liked the area so much that many of the families living here are now up to 3rd and 4th generation residents and workers. What an amazing place to experience. This is why we live on the road.