Condiment icon Tabasco is marking its 150th year with a year-long world tour celebrating the diversity of the spicy sauce.
Kicking off in New Orleans, a Tabasco Global Kitchen popup has travelled to locations around the world where local chefs and bartenders have been showcasing new and surprising ways to use the pepper sauce.
The Sydney event featured several food stalls offering Tabasco classics like oysters and Bloody Mary’s, and some more adventurous creations including a wagyu steak doughnut and two Tabasco-inspired gelato flavours.
Global Kitchen recipes are being released throughout the year on Tabasco.com and on brand social channels.
Tabasco's maker, The McIlhenny Company, was founded in 1868 by Edmund McIlhenny on Avery Island, Louisiana and the company remains family-owned and operated.
McIlhenny grew his first pepper crop and created the sauce by mixing the peppers with salt and vinegar, initially for his own consumption and for family and friends.
McIlhenny Company executive vice president Harold Osborn, who was in Sydney this week to mark the milestone, says word spread about the spicy sauce and before long, the product was being exported beyond US shores.
Osborn, who is a fifth generation member of the McIlhenny family, says every bottle of Tabasco is still made from the same ingredients and in the traditional way, with the mashed peppers aging in oak barrels and bottled on Avery Island.
The product is now sold in 185 countries, Osborn says, and Tabasco production has ramped up considerably over the years.
“We now make more Tabasco in one day than we did in my great-great-grandfather's lifetime,” he says.
The product was originally used on oysters and in soups, Osborn says, until 1922 when it was connected to the Bloody Mary.
“That was a big hit. The drink was invented at Harry's Bar in Paris and Tabasco was one of the original ingredients.”
To mark 150 years, the company also released a limited edition Diamond Reserve Red Sauce made from Tabasco peppers mashed with salt, aged in barrels for 15 years, blended with sparkling white wine vinegar and bottled in small champagne-style bottles, which has now sold out.
McIlhenny Company also has two new products which will be released in Australia later in the year: Tabasco Siracha and a Bloody Mary mix.
