Narrator: This is what Tabasco's original red sauce
looks like years before it arrives at grocery stores.
It starts here, aging inside these barrels
in southern Louisiana.
It takes five years to make a bottle of Tabasco sauce.
It's a long time.
Narrator: And the recipe inside hasn't changed
since 1868: red peppers, vinegar, and salt.
And even as the company's grown,
it's managed to keep much of the production
inside its headquarters on Avery Island.
But Tabasco's storied home is now under threat.
The factory is surrounded by shrinking marshes,
making it vulnerable to hurricanes.
And the company has spent millions on storm protection.
It changes drastic from storm to storm.
You can see the marsh deteriorate.
And what you do is you get out there
and you plant again. You try and hold what you got.
Narrator: We head to southern Louisiana
to see how the sixth generation of the McIlhenny family
is fighting for the survival of its hot sauce and home.
Tabasco grows peppers just for seeds inside this greenhouse.
We're also looking for the plants that produce
the richest color red peppers,
that perfect size, and then flavor, too.
Narrator: Christian Brown
is the great-great-great-grandson
of founder Edmund McIlhenny
and the company's agriculture manager.
Everything's looking good. No signs of aphids.
Narrator: He sends only the strongest seeds
to over 1,000 Tabasco farms around the world.
Tabasco says their peppers originate from the Amazon in South America.
They're about six times hotter than a jalapeño.
And they are tiny: only 1 to 1.5 inches long
and weighing a gram each.
Because the peppers are so small and easily damaged,
machines don't do the harvesting.
Christian: They're all handpicked.
Narrator: Tabasco harvests 10 million pounds
of peppers a year.
This footage is from Louisiana,
but the process looks similar abroad.
They sprinkle salt on the peppers
and use a giant machine to mash them into a paste.
Farms ship the paste back to Avery Island
through the Port of New Orleans.
Stefan: This mash is actually from Peru.
We have 50,000 pounds of Tabasco mash
inside that container, bulked in.
Narrator: This pump siphons the paste
into white oak barrels.
Some are 60 years old.
Stefan: Most of these barrels in here
essentially are used bourbon barrels.
Stefan: I don't really have the answer.
I know it works, and we've been doing it 150-plus years,
so I'm not changing it.
Narrator: A team works together
to fill and seal each one.
One truckload will fill up to 110 barrels.
But they can't overfill them, because ...
Stefan: If you have too much pressure,
sometimes those caps blow off.
Sometimes the lids will pop off overnight.
So it's a really simple fix.
Just kind of move it to the barrel next to it.
Narrator: It can take 30 minutes to finish one row.
Since they're old, the barrels don't have a perfect seal.
So workers pour salt on top.
It lets gases escape while limiting oxidation.
Stefan: The salt on top is just an extra protective layer.
If there is an imperfection, that will help.
Narrator: The team stacks each barrel by mash origin.
Stefan: So this whole bay here, going as far back as you can
to get to the wall,
is about 1,100 barrels of Colombia 2022.
Narrator: The mash releases
lots of gases during fermentation.
So a tiny valve on top helps relieve the pressure.
You have to have some ventilation process,
or it's going to explode.
Narrator: And that happens sometimes.
Stefan: It is like a Tabasco ghost.
They come in here at night, and they pop the lids off.
And we come back, and there's six or seven we have to fix.
Narrator: After three years, the mash inside
will stabilize, shrink, and darken in color.
Stefan: We can see
that it was filled about this level here.
And you can start to see rings on the side of that barrel
where the mash is going down.
Narrator: Even though it's shrunk,
the aged mash is still really spicy.
Not yet, not yet.
But it is hot.
So let's remember, this is 10 times more hot
than actual sauce.
Narrator: Next up, the aged mash
is pumped into the blending room.
Here, the pepper smell will hit you
right in the back of the throat.
I could say like getting maced, I guess, every day.
It really hits you hard.
Well, that's how I put my kids to college,
so I'm good with that. I love it.
Narrator: Morris Montgomery oversees blending,
but he goes by Nuk.
The Army veteran ensures all the sauce tastes the same,
even though it's coming from around the world.
Nuk: I try to do three or four different countries
and put them together.
So it could be like a little Colombia,
Peru, and a little Ecuador and Honduras.
Narrator: He pumps in vinegar
and blends it all for up to 28 days.
Seventy-two tanks mix at the same time.
Strainers remove pepper pulp and seeds.
Nuk will take a sample for the lab
to test for pH, and then ...
Nuk: This is finished Tabasco sauce. And this is ready to go.
Next step, to the bottling floor.
Narrator: That's where John Simmons comes in.
John: And I'm also a member of the sixth generation
of the McIlhenny family to make Tabasco sauce.
Narrator: John's factory fills
up to 700,000 bottles every day,
from minis to the iconic 5-ounce one.
It also pumps out nine different flavors,
from original red to habanero.
Sriracha is the company's fastest-growing one.
Today, machines do most of the filling,
capping,
and labeling.
John: So a bottle's going to go through in about 13 minutes.
Narrator: They gather the bottles
and package them into cardboard boxes.
John: We're doing it really fast, at like 300 bottles a minute.
Next, the shipping room.
John: We've got product for Germany, Japan, Sweden, Taiwan,
the Canary Islands, South Africa.
Narrator: Typically, all these newly packaged products
leave the warehouse within three weeks.
While the sauce is definitively global,
Avery Island has always been home.
This was where founder
and former banker Edmund McIlhenny
first grew the tiny red peppers.
He bottled his first hot sauce in 1868,
sealed it with wax, and sold just under 700 bottles
around the Gulf Coast. Each one cost $1.
He named the brand Tabasco, after the Mexican state
known for spice production and exports.
Edmund got a patent for it, and by the early 1870s
was selling his bottles across the US
and even in Europe.
And then it kind of started to take a little steam
and get bigger and bigger.
John: In one 24-hour period, we're going to double
and then some more of what Edmund did in his entire life.
Narrator: Edmund lived on Avery Island,
which is a natural salt dome
rising 163 feet above sea level.
As the highest point along the US Gulf Coast,
it's been a respite from raging hurricanes
for the McIlhenny descendants
that still call the island home.
But it's now at risk.
Louisiana's coast sinks by an average
of a third of an inch per year.
On average, between 1985 and 2010,
the state lost roughly a football field
of wetlands every hour.
When land sinks, it's more vulnerable to storm damage.
Heath: It changes drastic from storm to storm,
depending where it makes landfall at.
You can see the marsh deteriorate.
Narrator: Heath Romero is Avery Island's land manager.
He said when Hurricane Rita hit in 2005,
it turned this island into a lake,
and parts of the marsh were destroyed.
After Rita, the company built an 18-foot levee
with a pump system around the factory.
Heath: We put in water-control structures
to stop the salt water from getting to the cypress trees.
Narrator: They also planted tall grasses for protection.
Heath: You can see, we recovered all of this marsh.
That was open water at one time.
Narrator: But it's a slow-moving process,
especially as the home of Tabasco
enters another hurricane season.
Heath: You can't wait for somebody else to help you.
You have to take action in your own self
and try and protect what you have.
John: You're going to put Tabasco habanero,
you got to put it on vanilla ice cream.
Use a drop per spoonful.
It's perfectly OK to eat it out of the carton.
I know that's discouraged, but eat it out of the carton.
One drop of habanero per spoonful of vanilla ice cream.
It's amazing.
Tabasco and peanut butter is this sneaky great thing
that most people don't know about.