Hot Stuff: Taking The Tabasco Factory Tour On Avery Island, Louisiana

After checking out of our hotel in Lafayette, it was time to head to New Orleans for the first of our two visits there during February 2020. We had an important stop to make along the way though – the Tabasco Factory on Avery Island.

We first heard about it last year when visiting the Old Mill Museum in Lindsborg, Kansas as our tour guides Sheila and Jim suggested it to us. It was only a short diversion down to Avery Island along the way, so we figured it would be a fun place to stop along the route.

Shae called ahead of time to make sure they were pet-friendly as we’d have Truffles with us. They said they were and, to a certain extent, they are. Dogs are allowed in the Tabasco Country Store and outside at Restaurant 1868!, but aren’t allowed on the self-guided tour itself which isn’t what we expected based on the phone call. The nice thing though is that you can leave your pup with the employees in the Country Store and they’ll keep an eye on them out the back of the store. They made sure Truffles had water, they took her outside to use the restroom, etc., so she seemed well taken care of.

Before dropping Truffles off, we bought our tickets for the tour as you buy your tickets just outside of the museum.

Tabasco Factory Tours are only $5.50 per person which is very reasonable and comes with six mini bottles of Tabasco sauce (or perhaps three mini bottles per person). You can also buy separate tickets to Jungle Gardens which is a 170 acre semitropical garden that’s next door, or you can save a dollar by buying tickets for both attractions at the same time. Seeing as we still had to drive a couple of hours to New Orleans, we decided to only do the Tabasco Factory tour.

Stop 1 – Tabasco Musuem

There are ten places to visit on the self-guided Tabasco Factory Tour, with the first stop being the Tabasco Museum where you buy your tickets.

Inside the museum there’s information about the history of Tabasco Sauce and all kinds of memorabilia, including a Tabasco bottle guitar played by Van Halen’s bassist Michael Anthony.

After you’ve checked out everything in the museum, the tour continues outside where you’ll see a signpost clearly marking where you need to go next.

You’ll want to keep an eye out on your way to the Greenhouse as apparently there are sometimes bear sightings.

The fact that this sign is near a bamboo grove made us wonder if it was panda bears we should be looking out for 😉 The Tabasco Factory has this bamboo growing there because the company’s third president – E.A. McIlhenny – volunteered to be an experimental grower for the US Department of Agriculture. He planted 65 different types of bamboo on Avery Island, about 35 of which are still growing there.

While walking to the greenhouse, be sure to also keep an eye out for their fun bridge which is painted a little like bottles of Tabasco sauce.

Stop 2 – Tabasco Greenhouse

The Tabasco Greenhouse is the second stop on the tour and is where you can see a few different types of peppers being grown.

The one that’s obviously of most interest is the Tabasco pepper. It’s thought to have originated in Mexico or Central America, but no one knows exactly where it came from. It scores between 30,000-50,000 on the Scoville heat scale which, while hot, is nothing compared to the Ghost Pepper (1,041,427 on the Scoville heat scale) and Carolina Reaper (1,569,300 on the Scoville heat scale).

Something random we learned in the greenhouse is that this variety grows with the pod pointing up towards the sky. Heat rises after all 😉

Stop 3 – Barrel Aging Cooperage

As you leave the greenhouse, you’ll see another building which is the Tabasco Barrel Museum.

Inside you’ll find exhibits explaining the barrel aging process of Tabasco peppers, including a video showing how it’s aged and artifacts from the last couple of centuries.

Just outside of the museum area is the cooperage where you can see hundreds of barrels of Tabasco peppers being aged. The tops of the barrels are covered with a layer of salt to help prevent impurities from getting in the barrel.

Stop 4 – Blending Building

The fourth stop on the tour is the blending building.

Inside you’ll learn about the blending process where the Tabasco peppers that have been aged for up to three years in the cooperage are blended with distilled vinegar and stirred periodically for two to three weeks in 1,800 gallon vats made of wood.

Before the sauce is bottled, the seeds and skins from the peppers are removed and both scientific and taste testing is done to ensure it meets their quality expectations.

Stop 5 – Avery Island Experience

The fifth stop on the tour is the Avery Island Experience. This is where you’ll learn more about Avery Island, such as the fact that it’s not an island. It’s actually a salt dome covering 2,200 acres. With hills, valleys and water surrounding much of it, it certainly gives the appearance of an island.

Stop 6 – Salt Mine Experience

The sixth part of the Tabasco Factory tour is the Salt Mine Experience. To be honest, this section is a little hokey and doesn’t really add anything to the tour. All it consists of is a couple of mannequins dressed up as salt miners. You walk past them while dynamite sounds are played over speakers and…that’s it.

Stop 7 – Bottling Line

The short walk through the Salt Mine Experience leads you through to the bottling line.

They’d already bottled more than a quarter of a million bottles of Tabasco sauce that day, with the latest batch being chipotle flavored that was being shipped off to Belgium.

Stop 8 – Food & Flavors Of Tabasco Today

The eighth stop on the Tabasco Factory tour provides information about Tabasco sauce nowadays from its flavors to its iconic bottle to all the countries where you can find it worldwide to recipes and more. One fascinating tidbit is that Tabasco sauce was originally bottled in used cologne bottles!

This part of the tour also provides opportunities to get some cool pictures.

Seeing as our last name is Pepper, this photo op had to be taken advantage of.

Stop 9 – Tabasco Country Store

The ninth stop of the tour took us back to the Tabasco Country Store where we picked up Truffles.

It’s a gift shop packed full of Tabasco sauce and Tabasco-themed goodies.

One of my favorite items I saw was this baby blanket:

Cutest photo of the day goes to Truffles though who rocked her pepper beads like Flava Flav.

Be sure to head to the back of the Tabasco Country Store as there’s a bar where you can taste-test about two dozen Tabasco sauces, mustards, etc. The raspberry chipotle Tabasco sauce was one of our favorites and I also bought a bottle of their garlic grilling marinade as it was incredibly flavorful. Beware though – a couple of the sauces are very hot!

They even had Tabasco soda pop and Tabasco ice creams to try.

Stop 10 – Restaurant 1868!

It was about 2:30pm by this point, so we decided to have lunch at Restaurant 1868! seeing as they had pet-friendly seating on their porch and it was a nice day. 1868 is the year that Edmund McIlhenny founded the Tabasco company, hence the restaurant’s name.

Their menu had all kinds of tasty-sounding options, so as usual I had a hard time choosing what to get.

I’d enjoyed trying boudin in Lafayette a few days before, so I ended up ordering the Boudin Po Boy, while Shae got the Fiesta Nacho Supreme. Both our meals were tasty and reasonably priced.

Restaurant 1868! also offers a make-your-own Bloody Mary bar, so Shae took advantage of that being available seeing as I would be the one driving us to New Orleans that afternoon.

Final Thoughts

Despite not being big Tabasco sauce eaters, Shae and I had a great time going on the Tabasco Factory tour. It was surprisingly fun, interestingly and well-priced. Getting to try a bunch of different Tabasco sauces in the Tabasco Country Store was an added bonus and gave me a new appreciation for their products.

If you’ll be in or near Lafayette, Louisiana, I’d highly recommend taking a trip out to Avery Island to visit the Tabasco Factory.

Address

Tabasco Factory Tours, 32 Wisteria Rd, Avery Island, LA 70513