OLDEST FOOD COMPANIES

Hello ladies and gents this is the viking telling you that today we are talking 

TABASCO

According to company legend, Tabasco was first produced in 1868 by Edmund McIlhenny, a Maryland-born former banker who moved to Louisiana around 1840.

However, as Jeffrey Rothfeder's book McIlhenny's Gold points out, some of the McIlhenny Company's official history is disputed. A book review by Mark Robichaux of The Wall Street Journal quotes Rothfeder's book:

"The story actually begins in the pre-Civil War era with a New Orleans plantation owner named Maunsel White, who was famous for the food served at his sumptuous dinner parties. Mr. White's table no doubt groaned with the region's varied fare—drawing inspiration from European, Caribbean, and Cajun sources—but one of his favorite was of his own devising, made from a pepper named for its origins in the Mexican state of Tabasco. 

White added it to various dishes and bottled it for his guests. Although the McIlhennys have tried to dismiss the possibility, it seems clear now that in 1849, a full two decades before Edmund McIlhenny professed to discover the Tabasco pepper, White was already growing Tabasco chilies on his plantation."

Rothfeder cited a January 26, 1850 letter to the New Orleans Daily Delta newspaper crediting the slave-owning banker-politician Maunsel White as having introduced "Tobasco red pepper" (sic) to the southern United States and asserting that the McIlhenny was at least inspired by White's recipe.

 Jean Andrews, in her book "Peppers: the Domesticated Capsicums," goes further to declare—citing United States Circuit Court testimony from 1922—that prior to his death in 1862, “White gave some [pepper] pods, along with his recipe, to his friend Edmund McIlhenny, during a visit to White’s Deer Range Plantation.”

To distribute his, Edmund McIlhenny initially obtained unused cologne bottles from a New Orleans glass supplier. On his death in 1890, McIlhenny was succeeded by his eldest son, John Avery McIlhenny, who expanded and modernized the business, but resigned after only a few years in order to join Theodore Roosevelt's 1st US Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, the Rough Riders. On John's departure, brother Edward Avery McIlhenny, a self-taught naturalist fresh from an Arctic adventure, assumed control of the company and also focused on expansion and modernization, running the business from 1898 until his death in 1949.

Walter S. McIlhenny in turn succeeded his uncle Edward Avery McIlhenny, serving as president of McIlhenny Company from 1949 until his death in 1985. Edward McIlhenny Simmons then ran the company as president and CEO for several years, remaining as board chairman until his death in 2012. Paul McIlhenny became company president in 1998 and was chairman until his death in 2013. In 2012 McIlhenny cousin Tony Simmons assumed the company's presidency and in June 2019 his cousin Harold Osborn was chosen as the next president and CEO.

McIlhenny is one of just a few U.S. companies to have received a royal warrant of appointment that certifies the company as a supplier to Queen Elizabeth II. McIlhenny is one of the 850 companies around the world that have been officially designated as suppliers to the queen by such warrants. The warrant held is "Supplier of Tabasco HM The Queen – Master of the Household – Granted in 2009".

In 2005, Avery Island was hit hard by Hurricane Rita, and the family constructed a 17-foot (5.2 m)-high levee around the low side of the factory and invested in back-up generators.

And as always have a chilled day from the Viking.