TABASCO Original Red Pepper Sauce is made with three simple ingredients and aged in oak barrels for up to three years on Avery Island, Louisiana before bottling. The recipe originating from Edmund McIlhenny in 1868 has been used by the McIlhenny family for nearly 150 years.The pepper sauce that started it all. Endlessly versatile, you can enhance the flavor of any food with a dash of our signature sauce. A Brief History Tabasco brand Original Red Sauce owes much of its unique, pungent flavor to the handcrafted way it’s been made for over 140 years. Equally important is the heart of the one family who created this world-famous sauce as a labor of love.In 1868, Edmund McIlhenny mixed up his own personal pepper sauce recipe with three natural ingredients: fully aged red peppers, salt from Avery Island, Louisiana, and high-quality, distilled vinegar. Decades of competing recipes have only confirmed that the flavor of McIlhenny’s recipe could not be surpassed, and today Tabasco Original Red Sauce is still made in essentially the same way.